My tryst with chess

in covid times Tanmay bhatt went to samai rainai’s channel to playchess. Sagar shah of chessbase India was doing commentary there with samai raina while popular people from various industries were playing then one day i saw news that India’s tech billionaire Nilhil Kamath defated Viswanathan Anand in online chess match and next day it was revealed he cheated. So i knew Viswanathan Anand as i remermber reading news paper that we won and then i lost were bad and eveyone was bashing him left right and center.

Last year i was scrolling through my youtube feed there i saw of video of two chess players play chess in World chess championship, the video shows a shaking hands of one of the player who realised that he has made a blunder and he is about the lose then he shakes the hand with other player which depicts resignation from the game and other player sit and realizes he has won. In that video comments of people were also shown one comment which stayed with me was “Its my opponent not enemy”. After that video i become more invested in chess after that i heard the news the Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa defeated the best chess player of our times his name was Magnus Carlson. That made me remember my memories of chess my nanaji used to play chess with me.

So i then i got knew there is some kind of tournament was going on called as candidates in april 2024 and winner will be going to play world champsionsihp against Ding liren the current world champsion and one of the players featured in the video and this year highest number of players qualified from India. I was excited to watch Prag but in the videos as i was not able to find direct game streams i watched through an indian chess stream channel i used to watch till late nights like 3/4 am. There i got to know that candidates is classcial chess tournament and gukesh domaraju’s classical chess is really good. And i also knew Vidit gujrati as he is friends with samai and he also used to play chess on stream. As tournament was progressing i saw gueksh dominating the tournament and in the end prag and vidit was out the race and final result was dependent on match of Ian nepomniachtchi (he was the one was lost in the video) vs fabiano caruana but they drew and Gukesh also drew against hikaru nakamura as he was the highest point scorer in the tournament he become the challenger to the world champsion as he won the candidates tournaments and then world championship is going to be held in december there will be 14 classical chess games if result is doesnot come out then players plays rapid chess until one person wins.

So some times goes on i see that i saw a video in which sagar shah of chessbase india call’s gukesh as vishy’s kid (Viswanathan Anand) there i got to know that vishy runs a academy called WACA where young children are trained. After watching further videos i got to know that There is sort of army of young india players who are ready to dominate the world. WACA’s mentees include Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, Nihal Sarin, Leon Mendonca, R. Vaishali, Savitha Shri, and Vantika Agrawal.

So few months go bys then i kept hearing news that these mentees are wining at various tournament then one day i saw that chess olympiad is getting streamed on chessbase india’s channel. So then i watched matches there olympiad i a team game in which 6 pepole are there in a time 5 people are selected and plays the matches against various countries. India was competing in men and women categories

• Men’s team: Gukesh Dommaraju, R Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi, Vidit Gujrathi, and Pentala Harikrishna 
• Women’s team: Harika Dronavalli, Vaishali R, Divya Deshmukh, Vantika Agrawal, and Tania Sachdev 
• Captain: Srinath Narayanan for the men’s team, Abhijit Kunte for the women’s team

i knew tania as she used to do commentary at samai’s streams. Man again i watch the entire tournament and watched both indian teams wining the tourment i was really happy as vishy was the one who handed over the trophies to both the teams. In this game gukesh played on board one so in this tournament the player who is playing on board one will the strongest player and the rest follows till board five. Gukesh won most the matches as everyone knew Ding was also playing at board one so gukesh and ding can play against each other but ding skipped that match other player from china played and they lost. The indian teams dominated the entire tournament.

• **
  D. Gukesh**

  Won the individual gold medal on the top board, scoring 9 points in 10 games. Gukesh’s performance helped India win their first-ever Olympiad win in the men’s division.

  Arjun Erigaisi

  Won the individual gold medal on board 3, with 10 wins out of 11 matches.

  Divya Deshmukh

  Won the individual gold medal on board 3, improving from her previous year’s bronze medal.

  Vantika Agrawal

  Won the individual gold medal on board 4. 

To be eligible for an individual medal, a player must participate in at least eight rounds of the competition. The top three players on each board are ranked, but reading performance is used to approximate a player’s strength in the tournament. Reading performance is based on the strength of the players a player faces. by watching this tournament i got to know more about the wonder indian players.

I was very happy that chessbase india and samai made chess really popular in india Samai raina started playing chess because he watched a netflix series called queen’s gambit. And its wonderful to see vishy’s army is doing such a good in chess.

Today gukesh won and become the youngest world chess champion in the world