Young Grandmasters: India’s Nihal Sarin (left) plays against India’s Arjun Erigaisi during the Tata Steel Chess India Tournament, in Kolkata, Thursday, Dec.1, 2022.
It has been a great week or so for Indian chess. On Tuesday, 16-year-old Aditya Mittal crossed the coveted 2500 Elo-point mark in the sixth round of the El Llobregat Open Chess Tournament after having achieved his third Grandmaster (GM) norm earlier this year. This set him up to become the country’s 77th GM just days after GMs Nihal Sarin and Arjun Erigaisi went on to win the Rapid and Blitz events at the prestigious Tata Steel Chess India tournament in Kolkata. WGM R. Vaishali also came up with a facile victory in the Blitz women’s event in the same tournament, defeating stronger opponents.
Nihal and Arjun’s performances were praiseworthy as the field included two top 10 players in the U.S.: GMs Hikaru Nakamura and Wesley So. Nakamura, the World No. 1. in the blitz version of the game, slipped to No. 2 after the Tata Steel event, falling twice to Arjun. Arjun’s performance in the blitz event catapulted his live Elo ratings to 2773.8, good enough for the 10th spot in the live world rankings (see Table 1 ).
Charts appear incomplete? Click to remove AMP mode
This year has been a good one for elite Indian chess players. Grandmasters D. Gukesh and Arjun Erigaisi joined veteran GM V. Anand, GM Vidit Gujrathi and GM P. Harikrishna in the ‘Super GM’ 2700 Elo ratings club. This is the first time India has five Super GMs. GMs Praggnanandhaa, Nihal and S.L. Narayanan improved their ratings to the high 2600s. That Gukesh, Arjun, Praggnanandhaa and Nihal are still teenagers and rank 2, 3, 7 and 9, respectively, in the FIDE juniors list suggests that their best is yet to come.
Click to subscribe to our Data newsletter
Gukesh and Arjun had the most meteoric rises in 2022, with the former gaining more than 100 points after playing 127 games and the latter garnering 90 points in 144 games so far. Both players won gold medals in their respective boards in the Chess Olympiad playing for India-1 and India-2, respectively. Praggnanandhaa had a steadier rise, gaining 72 points in 93 games while GMs Vidit, Narayanan and Nihal made marginal improvements in Elo ratings in 60, 84 and 113 games, respectively. GM Harikrishna’s rating fell marginally by 12 points over 66 games, while Indian stalwart and FIDE deputy president, Anand, 52, played sparingly, gaining three Elo points in nine games. (See Chart 2 for ratings progression of the top-rated Indian players other than Anand in 2022.)
As of December 1, 2022, in FIDE’s official list, 1,779 players had achieved the GM title in the world of which 74 were from India. Aditya is set to be ratified as the 77th in the forthcoming list. Russia topped the tally with 234 GMs followed by the U.S. with 105, Germany with 96 and Ukraine with 87 (See Table 3). Only Russia with eight and the U.S. with seven (which includes a few who shifted from other countries) have more GMs with a rating above 2700 than India (five).
Eight Indians are now in the top 100 (See Table 4) in the classical version of the game. Four of them are the aforementioned juniors.
The significant improvement of the youngsters has also raised the median and average Elo ratings of the top 10 Indians to 2695 and 2694, respectively, from 2650 and 2667 only a year ago (See Table 5). The chess boom in 2022 in India has been driven by spectacular performances from the youngsters both in on-the-board and online events (GM Praggnanandhaa defeated World No. 1, Magnus Carlsen, more than a few times in rated online games). This augurs well for the medium-term outlook for the game in the country.
srinivasan.vr@thehindu.co.in
Source: FIDE, 2700chess.com
Also listen to: Beyond the Olympiad: India’s chess boom | Data Point podcast