How India’s Chennai mints world-beating chess champions, one move at a time | Arts and Culture

Chennai, India — Giant banners of a smiling teen beamed down on hundreds of students gathered at the school campus of Velammal Nexus to receive the young champion.

It was August 10, 2024, and the school was ready to put on a show unlike any it had witnessed before: 220 drones projected the teenage hero’s face into the sky as students held placards wishing him luck.

In a country that reserves this kind of adulation for movie actors and cricketers, a new and unlikely star had been born – in chess. Clad in his checked school uniform, 18-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju finally walked up to the stage to receive a gift from his school – a luxurious E-Class Mercedes Benz that he did not yet have a license to drive.

The event honored the young grandmaster’s accomplishments, including becoming the youngest to win the Candidates Tournament. This event saw 16 top-rated chess players battle it out to determine who would take on the reigning world champions.

Gukesh, a poker-faced, lanky teen, belongs to the latest crop of chess wizards that the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu has churned out in the last decade. The state is home to 31 grandmasters out of 85 in India and even proudly boasts a temple for the sport in the Tiruvarur district.

Now, the biggest prize of all awaits: Starting on Monday, Gukesh will face off against China’s Ding Liren at the World Chess Championship in Singapore. Over 14 grueling games that will stretch until mid-December, Gukesh will try to better the much older Ding, 32, who is the defending champion.

Yet, the glory that has embraced Indian chess in recent years is rooted in humble beginnings, defined by sacrifice and dedication – from the stars themselves, their families, and coaches – at schools and academies where dreams are forged, and then shaped for success.

A school for champions

Gukesh is far from the only – or first–star chess champion to graduate from a Velammal Nexus school. The school’s roster includes other young trailblazers like Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, Rameshbabu Vaishali, and Arjun Kalyan. While the Ramesbabu siblings compete with each other to break national and international records, Arjun is one of the coaches of the Indian national team, which won double gold at the Chess Olympiad in September in Slovenia.

They have all been trained by one man: 56-year-old Velavan Subbiah, the coach of the school’s chess team for more than a decade.

Located in the bustling neighborhood of Mogappair in Chennai, 150 meters (490 ft) from the main Velammal school campus, the educational group’s exclusive chess academy is impossible to miss, with large posters of its famous alumni propped up behind a glass facade at the entrance.

We walk into a room designed like a large conference chamber, complete with 50 odd chairs and tables and a chess scene playing out on a giant poster in the backdrop.

As he waits for the first batch of students for the day to troop in, Velavan takes a trip down memory lane. “I had initially been associated with the school as the parent of their former student – chess grandmaster Varshini. I stepped in to coach the team when the old coach resigned,” he says.

There has been no turning back for the businessman-turned-coach. Velavan once ran a company that dealt with the supply of construction materials. Now, he is building a pipeline of chess geniuses.

Ten years ago, he says, there were approximately 300 students enrolled in his chess coaching classes. Now, that number has soared to 2,000, with students coming from all of the Velammal group’s 15 school branches across Chennai.

The school dedicates three classes every week for extra-curricular activities – with chess being the favorite of the school and many students and parents.

The school waives fees for young chess champions and supports emerging stars with travel grants for international sports events. It arranges special classes and exams for them to accommodate their travel schedule.

Children who are yet to turn four train for chess tournaments at the school’s chess academy. Once the coach has identified a particularly talented child, they speak to the parents to streamline their training, often coordinating with external coaches to give the student one-on-one assistance.

Velammal Nexus’s chess academy (which was launched last year) also hosts workshops and camps to boost regular training.

About 30 minutes into our conversation, a group of students, impeccably dressed in their school uniforms of checked shirts and grey trousers, enter the room, clasping notes and water bottles. They pick up their chess boards and settle down to battle it out with their peers in the room.

Within minutes, there is tension as the children try to figure out both their next move – and that of their opponent. A six-year-old boy sits with both hands on his head while his neighbor taps the table nervously, coaches towering over the young players, deconstructing their moves and mistakes.

After an hour-long session, it takes one wrong move for the six-year-old to lose his game. But the disappointment on his face is quickly replaced with a smile. It is just one of an endless number of practice games he could play at the academy.

A new generation takes over.

For decades, Indian chess was synonymous with Vishwanathan Anand, the five-time world champion who locked horns with generations of other icons – from Russian Garry Kasparov in the 1990s to Norwegian Magnus Carlsen in recent years.

Now, the baton has been passed on: In October this year, Praggnanandha beat Anand in the quarterfinals of the WR Chess Masters tournament. Anand, meanwhile, trains and mentors rising chess talents including Praggnanandhaa, Nihal Sarin, Raunak Sadhwani, Gukesh, and Vaishali.

This new generation, coach Velavan says, has helped spread the sport’s popularity even to remote villages. “Our boys and girls get recognized and mobbed in every corner of the state,” says Velavan.

Behind Tamil Nadu’s – and Chennai’s in particular – emergence as a factory churning out chess champions is a combination of factors, coaches say.

There is support from the state government, such as ensuring immediate disbursal of cash prizes for winners and conducting international chess events in the state, says Velavan.

Geopolitical events have helped, too. The 2022 Chess Olympiad, for instance, was originally supposed to be held in Russia but was moved to Chennai following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The olympiad “proved to be a crowd puller and it piqued interest in chess amongst the general public,” Velavan says. The city went all out in its celebrations – installing life-size mascots resembling chess pieces and repainting the city’s iconic Napier’s bridge to make it look like a chess board. The high-profile event, which saw participants from more than 185 countries, was inaugurated by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Though the state’s two main political parties rarely see eye to eye, there is a bipartisan consensus over supporting chess. The previous government of the now-in-opposition All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham (AIADMK) party had in 2013 initiated a program to provide chess coaching to students aged seven to 17 – in effect making chess a part of the education system in the state.

There is also the role of parents. Chennai is a socially conservative city, where academic performances are often encouraged over extracurricular activities. Against that backdrop, many parents told Al Jazeera that they felt comfortable with their children taking up chess, seen as a “brainy” hobby. Some said that they believed chess would help their children focus better on their studies.

Velavan also points to the more direct sacrifices parents often make, citing the example of how Gukesh’s father put his career as an ear, nose, and throat surgeon on the back burner to travel and support his son at competitions.

And when sibling grandmasters Vaishali, 23, and Praggnanandhaa, 19, tour the world for competitions, they are always accompanied by their doting mother Nagalakshmi.

Sacrifices to success

While Vaishali and Praggnanandhaa practice chess during their tours, Nagalakshmi carries her trusted utensils and food ingredients, dishing out healthy home-cooked meals. Often, she can be seen on the margins of the large halls where chess games are held, waiting anxiously for the results of her children’s matches.

Meanwhile, back home in Chennai, the father of the siblings, Rameshbabu, dwells on the ecosystem of support that makes this possible. A retired bank manager, Rameshbabu and his wife Nagalakshmi do not come from a chess background.

“We had initially put Vaishali in chess classes to reduce screen time but she showed amazing progress,” he recalls. Vaishali went on to win the Girls’ World Youth Chess Championship for Under-12s in 2012 and Under-14s in 2015. Her brother, Praggnanandhaa, who had initially gone to accompany his sister during her matches, was soon making strides of his own. At the age of 10, he made history by becoming the youngest international master in history.

It was not easy to support their journey, and would have been impossible to do without sponsors and helpful coaches, the father says. “At one point, I even considered stopping Pragg from playing the sport due to financial constraints but we had constant support that egged us on.”

A polio survivor, he is also grateful for family members who help him in the absence of his wife and children. “With chess tournaments happening every month, my wife and children end up travelling for more than half the month,” he says.

Often, the family does not get to celebrate birthdays or festivals like Diwali together. And even when his kids are back home, they train at least six hours every day.

“It is this consistency that has taken them places,” says veteran coach RB Ramesh, who has trained the brother-sister duo.

It was the day of Vijayadashami, a festival considered auspicious for new beginnings when we visited GM Ramesh’s chess academy (Chess Gurukul) in Chennai’s T Nagar. This is where the Rameshbabu siblings and several other grandmasters have trained over the years.

Registrations for the new classes are on, and children of all ages, accompanied by their parents, are rushing to enter an otherwise inconspicuous building.

Meanwhile, older students sit in three rooms, almost meditatively focused on the boards before them, seemingly unaffected by the commotion outside.

Ramkumar Subramaniam, who heads operations at the club, says that “the success of Vishwanathan Anand” paved the way for this new generation. But in addition to other factors, the COVID-19 lockdown through most of 2020, and the turn to online classes during the pandemic, also helped spread the sport, he says, at a time when children could not access playgrounds.

“We now have chess classes in every other street”, he says, laughing. Ramkumar has left a successful IT career to help his young son find a footing in the world of chess, only to be absorbed by it himself.

Initially, he would take a few days off to travel with his son for various tournaments but he found that the frequency of travel increased as his son began to play chess more professionally. “There are tournaments every month and parents like us would set up social media groups to discuss the various events that we should consider and plan logistics like travel, stay, and food options.”

With most children starting young, the constant presence of a parent or a coach becomes necessary for their active participation.

“I encourage my students to start and succeed early so that they can get external (financial) backing to aid their career,” says Ramesh, the coach.

Without that financial help, the sacrifices families need to make to support the professional chess careers of their young children can spiral quickly – at times forcing them to choose between the board game and household goods.

Starting early

This October, nine-year-old Shravaanica Anburoja Saravanan made history by becoming the youngest Indian player to surpass the 2000 Elo rating – a chess benchmark of quality that only 2 percent of active chess players have achieved.

She is the youngest female candidate master (WCM) in Asia and the second-youngest WCM in the world. The WCM is a title awarded by the International Chess Federation (FIDE) exclusively to women chess players who are rated above 2000 in the classical FIDE rating.

It all started when Shravaanica, then just five, picked up the game from her older sister, Ratshikaa, during the COVID lockdown. Her mother, Anburoja – who spoke to Al Jazeera along with Shravaanica on the phone in between games at a tournament in Portugal – used to run a tuition center for neighborhood kids in the small town of Ariyalur in Tamil Nadu.

The mother realized that the young girl, still to start formal schooling, could jot down physics notes and recite lengthy Tamil poetry with ease. Little Sharvaanica, Anburoja saw, had extraordinary memory and analytical skills – qualities that would prove helpful in chess.

Her father, Sarvanan – a weaver – signed her up for online chess classes. Over the years, the family has had to part with their refrigerator, a wooden cot, chairs, and even Shravaanica’s favorite silver anklets to support her training and participation in events.

After winning several competitions, the young girl qualified for the under-seven chess Asian chess championship (2021) but had to back out due to a lack of funding. Still, she kept practicing, and in 2022, finished second in a state-level tournament, and then won a national title later that year.

By then, she had also secured a spot at the Hatsun Chess Academy in Sivakasi under Vishnu Prasanna, a grandmaster who also coaches Gukesh. The family relocated to Sivakasi to help the young girl train. Skipping regular school, she would train from 9 am until 6 pm at the chess academy.

She went on to win all 23 games across all three formats – classic, rapid, and blitz – at the Asian School Championship held in Sri Lanka in 2022. She then clinched gold at the Commonwealth Games (under-10 girls category) early this year.

As Sharvaanica kept surpassing chess summits around the world, the family had to find various means to support her ambition. “As a parent, we had to do this for her so we sold everything that we could – from pawning jewelry to selling furniture and our refrigerator,” Anburoja shares. My elder child, too, pitched in by selling off her cycle, and she even tutored younger kids online to support Sharvaanica’s training.”

With heavily subsidized fees, Prasanna believes that initiatives like the Hatsun Chess Academy give a boost to deserving talent like Shravaanica and help the sport reach deeper across rural Tamil Nadu. Meanwhile, the state government now sponsors Sharvaanica’s travel for major events, and Velammal Nexus waives her school education fees.

All of that has made the family’s battles off the board a little more manageable.

Yet, for a family that had to strip their house of everything but the basics to fund their child’s chess journey, the results have only begun to show. Anburoja, who travels with her daughter, still worries about not replacing the shoes the girl has outgrown, or affording more nutritious meals for the little champion. She dreams of buying a new pair of silver anklets for Shravaanica someday.

India’s journey as a chess giant is only now taking off. But when Gukesh plays at the world championships next week, he will be carrying the hopes of hundreds of prodigies, their parents, and coaches for whom chess is much more than a game. Every move will be cheered and dissected in homes and academies across Chennai as a generation of even younger champions than the 18-year-old prepares to checkmate global rivals.