Chennai and Chess: A Never-Ending Love Story
India is considered a chess superpower in modern day sporting graph. This crown fits perfectly in today’s scenario, and the reason this title holds true is the contribution of Tamil Nadu as a state and Chennai as the capital city in making Chess come to the big screen, quite literally.
The largest indication that chess has flourished in the current ecosystem is the increasing count of about 85 Grand Masters who have emerged from their hometowns and managed to successfully represent across different Olympiads and Championships, which is a huge testament to the sport’s positive development.
Chess has been around for hundreds of years, with its inception slated to have been in our mother land only, from ancient formats of the game that we know today.
Chennai as a city has a long history for promoting this indoor sport and has been crowned as the ‘Chess Capital of India.’ The city’s chess culture is constantly on a hustle and bustle mode due to its leading academies, reputed grandmasters, and strong governmental support.
The popularity of chess in the southern city dates back to the 1950s, and as the decades have gone by, the meteoric rise has made its engagement relevance go stratospheric.
The 44th FIDE Chess Olympiad of 2022 served as a testimony to the number of chess prodigies the city has churned out. Out of the 85 players from varied regions of the nation, close to 31 of them have emerged from Chennai, more than 35% of the total figure.
Drawing back on the evolution of this perfect-fit almost cinematic love story, chess as a game found its way through Chennai with the city’s pioneer chess club named after Mikhail Tal, a Soviet Latvian chess master.
What started as a Chess Club in 1972 in Chennai by IM Manuel Aaron to propagate the views of Soviet Union as a nation amongst the local citizens and looked at it as a possibility for their propaganda paved the way for solid foundation that remains unshakeable even several decades later.
The Soviet community supported their ambition to promote the agendas by providing chess books, chess sets, chess clocks, everything they used to import from the USSR for free and even built a club too.
The 2022 Chess Olympiad held in Chennai after it was moved from Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine and political unrest goes on to speak volumes of the weightiness the city puts in promoting chess to as large an audience as possible.
Its success catapulted India’s chess profile on the global platform.
A couple of years ago, in July 2019, Prithu Gupta became India’s 64th chess grandmaster. It was a symbolic moment for Indian chess as the country at last had one grandmaster mapped out for each of the 64 squares on the chess board.
The count went on to showcase not just how far the Indian chess diaspora had come from having just a single Grand Master in 1988 but also how the recent years have indeed seen a flurry of youngsters attaining their titular norms and become a member of an elite club professionally.
The country’s first International Master, Manuel Aaron, grew up in Tamil Nadu. The first grandmaster (Viswanathan Anand), the first female grandmaster (Subbaraman Vijayalakshmi), and the first International Arbiter are all from Chennai. Having such high star value played a major part in inspiring the young generations to look up positively.
The reigning world champion, D Gukesh won the 2024 World Chess Championship after defeating GM Ding Liren hails from the chess capital again. It is surely a feeling of immense pride to have one single city carry the weight and produce brainiacs one after the other, who go to on script history with their competence and game acumen.
A pivotal point that fuels the unconditional love between the coastal city and chess is the deep inclination and involvement of parents in inculcating an affinity for chess as a ‘brain stimulating’ hobby, which helps children to increase their attention span and focus on academics.
The Tamil Nadu state government excitedly lends its unwavering support to chess, giving away cash prizes for winners and hosting local and international chess events time and again. This creates an urge amongst youngsters to take up chess as a sport and build their finesse to claim the monetary benefits.
The West Bridge Anand Chess Academy and Velammal Nexus Chess Academy are amongst the top-rated academies that have produced chess wizards and some of the current world champions who are high-ranked players by FIDE hail from the sporting city of Chennai.
The five-time world champion Vishwanathan Anand, the current world champion D. Gukesh, the sibling duo and Grand Masters R. Vaishali, and R. Praggnanandhaa, GM RB Ramesh, all have contributed in their own ways to the popularization and spread of this skillfully wicked board game.
There is no one thing that one can accurately describe the phenomenon that is ‘Chennai Chess’, but with the abundant talent oozing from the city, it is evident that chess as a sport will continue to gain prominence as time passes. India has the potential to dominate chess on a global scale, with Chennai as the leader of the pack.
