Given the frightful attention he is getting, one might think D. Gukesh would wish for Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak. Even if he does, he doesn’t show it. For, he doesn’t avoid adhesive journalists who endeavour to elicit answers from him.
But the second-youngest Grandmaster in chess history wasn’t like this till as recently as last year, says his doctor father Rajinikanth. Both Rajinikanth and Gukesh’s mother, Padma Kumari, also a doctor, have been surprised by the change in their son.
“It’s a big shock,” says Rajinikanth. “He used to shy away from giving interviews, from just talking to journalists. Sagar Shah of ChessBase India used to complain, actually. Recently, Shah was utterly surprised when he had a 15-minute chat with Gukesh. It’s like suddenly he [Gukesh] decided to wake up and be like that. He’s continuously surprising us. He’s like a crossword puzzle to us.”
Gukesh is ever-composed, soft-spoken, to-the-point. He comes across as a guy who’s steeped to the gills in serious purpose.
When Gukesh recently visited former world champion Viswanathan Anand, the latter observed, “We’re mostly on the same page on many things. But he’s very quiet. He’s, you know, obviously one of these ‘my chess will do the talking for me’ kind.”
The beginning
Rajinikanth, who had wanted Gukesh to play tennis, acted instead on Padma Kumari’s suggestion to introduce their son to chess. Gukesh was duly enrolled in his school’s chess programme when he was six-and-a-half years old.
After coach V. Bhaskar said he was “picking [it] up fast” and that he had potential, Gukesh trained under Vijay Anand for nearly four-and-a-half years.
Rajinikanth says: “About six months into his coaching, we went to a children’s chess tournament. It was the first time we were getting exposed to a chess competition. There, Praggnanandhaa was felicitated for having become the under-eight world champion. We were surprised, curious and inspired.
“Gukesh was also curious that a person of almost similar stature was getting felicitated. We then read articles on Praggnanandhaa. I think it hugely motivated him, especially the attention that Praggnanandhaa was getting.”
Aiming high
Gukesh has always been ambitious. His father says Gukesh had told his school’s vice-principal that he would become a Grandmaster before he got to Class X. “I thought he was being over-ambitious. Now, he’s achieved it much earlier [Class VII],” Rajinikanth exclaims.
D. Gukesh.
Two other assertions offer a measure of his ambition: Gukesh has told the media that he wants to become world champion, and that he would like to play and beat Anand. And where his coach Vishnu Prasanna and Anand say an ELO rating of 2650 is a realistic immediate goal, Gukesh, currently 2508, says he’s aiming for 2700.
Rajinikanth says, however, that not everything came easy for Gukesh; that he struggled when he started out. Although he began playing ‘rating’ tournaments in 2014, he won his first Nationals only in 2017. But things swiftly changed.
“In the years 2017 and 2018, there was steep rise, in the sense he quickly earned a lot of rating points,” says Rajinikanth.
This was despite Gukesh having a K-factor of 10 during the latter part of that period. The K-factor, a coefficient in the formula to calculate ratings, determines how many points are gained or lost per match. With a K-factor of 10 (assigned to anybody rated 2400 and higher), the accumulation of rating points is usually slower than at higher K-factors (assigned to lower-rated players).
According to Rajinikanth, it typically takes two or three years to earn 100 rating points at a K-factor of 10. “Gukesh was around 2400 in March and got to 2500 [live rating] in December,” he says.
Grandmaster B. Adhiban is amazed by this. Anand says, “It shows a lot of consistency. And I think it’s a healthy trait to have. I’ve seen as well that his level of chess is quite stable. It doesn’t fluctuate hugely. That’s good.”
Managing the workload
Asked if the number of matches Gukesh plays is a cause for concern, Anand says, “Yes and no. It works for some people, it doesn’t work for others. If you’re the kind of person who likes training and then going back, I think that’s one thing.
“But if — quite a lot of players are like this — you do your training at tournaments, it’s some other thing. A tournament gives you specific problems every day. What your opponent did today is a specific problem. Otherwise, you’re working but you don’t know what you should work on, focus on.
“The disadvantage is, obviously, after a while it can become mechanical. When you play, say, 300 games a year, it’s difficult to play with the same enthusiasm.
“I used to play more than I play nowadays. Simply because, when you’re young you just play it as you like. It’s not a bad idea for him to take a rest at some point. But I don’t see why it has to be today or tomorrow. I also feel that for his freshness, it might be nice to take a break.
“So, if he took a break for one month or two months, sometimes he can come back much stronger. But there is no particular reason why it has to be now. It’s not a concern; many of his peers play as much as he does.”
For his part, Gukesh, who played 220 games in 2018, doesn’t want to slow down. His coach and father concur; they believe it helps him keep getting better.
Training
Although chess engines have become an indispensable part of training, Gukesh uses them minimally, says coach Prasanna.
“The work of those engines is to give you the moves. Like, in a position, what the advantageous moves are. Suppositions, if you may.”
Prasanna thinks Gukesh’s “thought process is still developing” and limits the use of engines in his training. Gukesh does, however, study matches — ongoing, recent and old. “Downloading games to check moves and learn is essential, I believe. He does it a lot,” says Prasanna. “He also reads a lot of chess books, especially on players.”
This approach to training appears in agreement with Anand’s belief that the use of technology must be judiciously balanced.
The next step
Prasanna says Indian players tend to stagnate at the 2650-2700 level.
“[At that level], to use a tennis analogy, opponents make very few unforced errors. Winning becomes difficult. You have to show up with something special. That will be the biggest challenge for him.”
He says Gukesh has had a taste of it and found it difficult to “break through”. He drew with “a pretty solid” Adhiban (2689) in the last round of the Tradewise Gibraltar chess festival. Prasanna adds, however, that Gukesh has a “fresh mind” which could help him at that level.
Gukesh, his sights firmly set on 2700, certainly seems to be up for it.
