Posted: Aug 30, 2020 7:24:23 pm
The biennial Chess Olympiad, the most important team tournament in the world, is to the game what the Davis Cup is to tennis, a celebration of team spirit. (Photo: Twitter / @FIDE_chess)
From india first participation in the final of the Chess Olympiad it is certainly a testament to their growing stature internationally. But the warnings accompany the glory. The feat is undoubtedly historic, but India is still far from matching the performance of chess superpowers such as Russia, China or the United States.
What is the relevance of the Chess Olympiad?
The biennial Chess Olympiad, the most important team tournament in the world, is to the game what the Davis Cup is to tennis, a celebration of team spirit.
But like its tennis counterpart, the Chess Olympiad is not considered the pinnacle of greatness in the game. Rather, it is a testament to the depth of a country’s talent; it is ironic that Norway is hardly a force even though it boasts of world champion Magnus Carlsen.
World No. 5 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France or Anish Giri of the Netherlands did not reach the knockouts. Also missing were the American couple of Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura, ranked No. 2 and No. 18 respectively in the world.
In the past, Viswanathan Anand skipped the Olympiad to focus on the World Championships.
For these reasons, chess, like tennis, is primarily an individual activity, the Olympiad does not have the same brilliance as a World Championship or the Candidates. In the past, chess greats prioritized Linares and Tata Steel in the Chess Olympiad.
With 163 teams in the fray, it is the largest chess tournament in the world, but not the largest. The game itself has inherently celebrated individual glory more than team triumphs. The only time the Chess Olympiad was enthusiastically followed was during the height of the Cold War. It is not surprising that the USSR has won it more often (18 times), and even after its fragmentation, Russia has been awarded the gold medal six times. Former Soviet states like Armenia and Ukraine have managed to break Russia’s monopoly in recent years.
What is the format of the Olympiad?
The large number of participants in an Olympiad only makes the fast format viable. The classic format will drag on too long, while the blitz feels unsuitable for a tournament labeled “Olympiad.”
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The format has further shortened this term due to the online participation mode: it is played for 15 minutes and with an increase of five seconds per move, compared to 25 plus 10 in previous editions.
It has also made structural changes, such as the rules that at least half of the team must be made up of female and male youth players. Until this year, they used to be the top four players plus a substitute. The rationale for FIDE is that it brought more diversity, although it upset several teams that had a disproportionate gender ratio like the United States and Iran. So in effect, the Olympiad has juxtaposed the regular Olympiad, a women’s Olympiad, and a junior Olympiad, which the chess world feels has diluted the tournament’s level of competition.
The addition of the junior segment benefited India when they encountered China. The ultra-tough matches between the male and female seniors ended in draws. But India’s juniors proved they are better than China’s as R Praggnanandhaa edged out Yan Liu and Divya Deshmukh edged out Jiner Zhu to give India a 4-2 win.
How to put the career of dreams in India in perspective?
This is an ideal time to reality check. Although five-time world champion Anand sparked a chess boom in the country throughout the 1990s and 1990s, no Indian player has looked good enough to be considered a suitable successor. There have been flashes of talent, but none with Anand’s global potential, which only broadens the halo around him.
WGMs Koneru Humpy and Harika Dronavalli endured mixed tournaments: they were solid against China but cracked under the relentless aggression of the Armenians. However, there is hope for the future as both Praggnanandhaa (who lost only one of his games) and Deshmukh have performed well. Also Nihal Sarin, who has been in good shape this year.
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India has also been lucky, for example, in the quarterfinals against a formidable Armenia. Haik Martirosyan lost network connectivity and lost time when he was going to make his 69th move against Nihal Sarin. FIDE strongly asserts that if a player’s internet connection is lost, for two minutes or less, they will not only lose the match, but will also be kicked out of the tournament. Armenia appealed to FIDE for Sarin’s victory, but was rejected.
By the time Martirosyan lost connection, the party was on a razor’s edge. An angry Levon Aronian tweeted: “In our match against India, Haik Martirosyan lost in time due to http://chess.com disconnection. We showed that our connection was stable. It was a problem with accessing http://chess.com, not on our side. All we asked was to continue that game from the same position and at the same time. Is it too much to ask?”
Therefore, instead of viewing the achievement as a definite sign of India’s emergence as a chess powerhouse, it would be useful to view it as an indicator of the potential it has to be a powerhouse. Therefore, the result could be a catalyst for the final result.
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