Candidates chess: Can Indian quintet hold their own among the challengers?

Not long back, the Candidates chess tournament was a remote affair for India with a certain Viswanathan Anand as the lone challenger. The upcoming edition in Toronto, a three-week affair which begins on 4 April, will see a paradigm shift with as many as five Indians involved in the battle to earn the rights to take on the men and women’s world champions.

While 18-year-old Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, 17-year-old Gukesh D and 29-year-old Vidit Santosh Gujrathi will be flying the Indian flag in the eight-man Open event at the Candidates, 22-year old R. Vaishali and Koneru Humpy – a senior pro among them at 36 - will be in the fray in the women’s event which will also feature eight contenders.

The winner of the two events, which former world champions say is as tough as the actual world championship itself, will earn the right to challenge the current world champions — China’s Ding Liren and Ju Wenjun, also from China.

The presence of five Indians is, in a way, symptomatic of the progress the country has made as an emerging chess superpower. The following piece of statistics is telltale: between 1988 to 2013, India produced 35 grandmasters in 25 years. In just the last decade, India has managed to produce almost 50 of them.

“Our chess players have been doing well for the last few decades. It has been getting better and better with each year with players raising the bar for the subsequent generation. It has all been leading up to this point. Suddenly we have a few youngsters who have been racing upwards at a breakneck speed. Right now India is probably the fastest-growing nation in the world in chess. Almost everyone in the sport agrees, the future of chess is with India,” RB Ramesh, coach of Praggnanandhaa, told Indian Express.

Incidentally, only one of the five in Toronto: Humpy has experienced the pressure of playing at the event before - a tournament which is notoriously tricky to win in the first go. A long line of world champions, from Anand to Magnus Carlsen to Bobby Fischer have had to learn their lessons the hard way in their debut Candidates.

Of the five Indians headed to Toronto for the Candidates, only Humpy has experienced the pressure of playing at the event before. Historically, the Candidates tournament is notoriously tricky to win in the first go. A long line of world champions, from Viswanathan Anand to Magnus Carlsen to Bobby Fischer have had to learn their lessons the hard way in their debut Candidates.

The Indian players, in an effort to buck the trend, have resorted to divert their attention off the field in a tune-up for the event. ‘Prag’ had been playing beach volleyball and other sports to boost his aerobic fitness, as it is known that chess players burn thousands of calories every day even if they’re simply sitting still on the board. Vidit, on the other hand, took a trip to the Niagara Falls because his advisors wanted him to break the shackles of tournament routine.

For Gukesh, it’s been intense preparations as he has hired a team of four or five trainers and seconds to help him prepare. 

The field

Open: Ian Nepomniachtchi, Russia (rating 2758)

Praggnanandhaa R, India (2747)

Fabiano Caruana, USA (2804)

Nijat Abasov, Azerbaijan (2632)

Vidit Gujrathi, India (2727)

Hikaru Nakamura, USA (2789)

Alireza Firouzja, France (2760)

Gukesh D, India (2743)

Womens: Lei Tingjie, China (2550)

Kateryna Lagno, Russia (2542)

Aleksandra Goryachkina, Russia (2553)

Nurgyul Salimova, Bulgaria (2426)

Anna Muzychuk, Ukraine (2520)

Vaishali R, India (2481)

Tan Zhongyi, China (2521)

Humpy Koneru, India (2546)

The format

Both events are in double round-robin format, which means each player will face their seven other opponents twice, once with white and once with black pieces. There will be 14 rounds with four rest days.

Players will get a point for a win, half-a-point for a draw and zero for a loss. The one with maximum points after these 14 rounds will be declared the winner of the competition. The time control for a match is 120 minutes for the first 40 moves and then 30 minutes for the rest of the game. There will be a 30-second increment per move starting from move 41.

In case there are two players tied in first place, they will have to play two rapid chess games. If more than two players are tied at top, a single round-robin matches have to be played. If any players are still tied at the top, then they will have to play blitz matches.