Hello, and welcome to Express Sports podcast.

You're listening to Game Time with me and me he served a Vinayak is here with us, and so is Ahmed Khamat, And I don't know how much is feeling today because he's supposed to be off to go up with DFL Myan for what was supposed to be this grand week where Indian chess players would assert their dominance on the world stage and everything.

Every other kind of uh exaggerated jargons whatever you can call it, we were supposed to use.

But Amid put us a plot to estogia and that's what we're going to discuss today.

We're going to talk about the Chess World Cup and how as we enter the business end of the tournament there isn't a single Indian featuring there and at least all bit two from the Indian Express Amit and mynk Ahmit.

That must make you feel better.

Yeah, technically I'll be the highest rated Indian left at the tournament.

In a sense that says a lot about Indian chess.

The depth I mean, unfortunately, but yeah, I mean.

It is true.

But me it's a measure of how much Indians just has grown, Right, maybe if you look at the twenty twenty one addition, we had one guy in the quarterfinals and that was seen as okay, great, we've made a giant stride and one guy has reached one step, has reached almost one step away from making it to the candidates.

Then you had four guys in the quarterfinals last time around in twenty twenty three, and that was suddenly for Indian psyche, it became like a norm.

We were like this sort of nothing like at that sort of our level suddenly was construed as and which is why now when we have no people going into the semi finals or just one person making it to the quarters, which was we suddenly feel ourselves disappointed, and I think it speaks about the leaps that we've made already.

We'll also be very disappointed when the candidates come around and we'll just have one person from India competing, because last time around ever two.

So it will be But then again, if you look at the women's candidates, me next year, there will be what woman and were already making it through and I think Wesiali also has qualified.

So at least THI care the candidates may at least.

We'll have enough representation, I guess, and in the men's set will be pregnant and that is it.

He's still yet to be confirmed, but he should make it true.

I mean, at the end of the year he will get his official confirmation.

And of course we forget that whoever comes through the candidates will be facing an Indian on the men's side, that is Degukesh.

We'll come to.

Of course, we kind of move ahead in the story just when if you were to come in at this point, we've spoken so much about chess rise and everything, and one point that Ahmit mentions, it's pretty interesting that we were kind of spoilt by the sheer numbers of Indians making deep into the tournament.

But this was the opportunity, right.

It's when on a high there is a tournament on home soil and everyone's talking about it.

This is the time when maybe they could have you know, slammed home that whole dominance point and could have done something more striking.

Mister apportunity in that sense.

Yeah, feelds like that here.

I mean, at least Amit and mine could know better.

But when you have a certain strong representation at a home event, so many Indians in the fray and a lot of early exits.

It tends to kind of put a downer on I mean, it's pretty much been what two years, I think, ahmit where we've been talking about highs and highs and highs of Indian chess.

So I guess at some point it had to catch up.

That's of sport works.

I mean, even a cerebral sport like chess would have to catch up with a lot of averages.

So I'm guessing that this is probably a blip more than anything.

I'd be curious to know.

I'm it's take on.

I mean, if you've got to go play by player, basically slightly bigger concern than just the World Cup would be gukeish, right, I mean it's for Prague and arguing.

Maybe you could put down the World Cup as a blip.

But Goukish has been in a slightly prolonged period of bat form, is that fair to say?

And we wrote about the transition period that he is in.

But how much of a concern and it is that gush early exit here at the World Cup, but also generally struggling this year.

I don't know whether when I think when I spoke to his coach Grigorsk, who's been with him since twenty twenty three.

He made a great point, you know.

He mentioned how there's a problem with somebody when he becomes a world champion.

One is that everybody wants to put a target on their back, which means everybody tries to beat you.

Even if they lose to the rest of the competitors in a round robin tournament or a knockout, they will definitely want to leave a mark and join the Chigorin club, which is a club of players who beaten the reigning world champion in chess.

So that is one thing.

The other thing I think what happens is when you are a Gukish, when you are a world champion, you don't have a lot of players trying to take too many risks because you know that if you try and blunder, you are going to be punished by a player of Goukeise's caliber, which is why they are maybe even happy with taking a draw.

And in such cases, Goukseh's style doesn't allow him to maybe try and like be a pacifist in that sense, so he tries to take risks, try and push the game into a more aggressive battle and then he ends up paying the price.

So I mean, when the World Championship does come along, I would expect Bookage to be much much more prepared than he is going into these tournaments, because, look, it's not the first time this has happened.

When vishunatan Anan in his own career, he's had these slumps himself.

When he became a grandmaster for the first time, he suddenly experienced a slump in his form because he didn't know what to do.

There was no target that he was chasing.

In a sense.

Then he became like a world champion, and then again he faced the slump because suddenly the thing that you are chasing for all of your chest career is suddenly in your hands, and you are pretty young, maybe twenty something, and then you don't know what to do, like what is a new gold?

Like that goal setting kind of takes time, and I think that is exactly what you were seeing from Bookish.

But when the next World Championship comes, I think he should be much more prepared because you are facing one opponent and you have a team of like five or six or whatever amount of people you put around you to try and focus for that very one specific challenge.

I mean, obviously it is a concern that I'm not done to diminish the fact that he's losing a lot, But to be fair to him, he's playing tournaments that other world champions who would not even consider playing, right, we didn't see a lot of Dingler and playing when he was the world champion Magnus of course.

I think the problem with Magnus is that he spoilt us silly, considering he was in that sort of a form where he would murder people, right, so we should not try And I think, like googise is what nineteen right now, Magnus only got his first candidate spot.

I think at what twenty two or something, so Kill has a lot to catch up to.

But I'm not sure we should be like going in it with like complete alarmbles.

You mentioned, is there a difference in the post to world championship title playing behavior of both these guys and in terms of results?

Do you see linkled and two kind of struggle right after getting his title?

Are his struggles different compared to Bush?

Yeah?

Percent, Like you know, the thing with ding was it wasn't just a lack of motivation, or it wasn't just looking for the next goal from Ding.

Me, what I saw from Ding was that Ding looked in like a deep hole.

A lot of people have spoken about is being himself spoke about going through a depression.

Right, Gukish is not there.

Bukais is somebody who is very happy to be playing in tournaments.

Of course he loses, but that's more to do with his chest itself, but not so much with his let's say, his mindset or his emotional well being.

So that is where the difference comes in.

And uh, look, even if Gukas is losing a lot, if you remember the comments that a lot of these guys like Hikaru, Magnus, all of them were making about Ding, they were already talking about Ding being finished while the World Championship contender was yet to be finalized, because they had seen him in tournaments, because they had seen him make some truly inexplicable moves on the board, like I think Ding.

I remember either Anishiri or Karu telling me that when you face him on the board, you feel that there is something wrong because you feel that that guy is very nervous.

You see him like cuffing a lot, and these are like nervous cuffs.

It was almost like a tick of a nervous person.

It was not some cuff because you have something in your lungs or whatever your respiratory system.

You know, those sorts of signs the players were picking up on with Bush.

I don't think that is a problem with Gukesh.

Maybe once the World Championship actually comes in sides, once he knows who the challenger is, then suddenly you will see his results pick up.

Because see, one thing we need to realize about Books is when he went into the World Championship against Ding, he was the most prepared that you could be in terms of opening right.

So whatever he's done in these last few months has been to try and make sure that his other aspects of his chest catch up with his calculating skills or his opening and like he's tried to play a lot of rapid and blatz, which has never been his forte.

And I mean he topped a rapid tournament in Zagreb where guys like Magnus Fabiano all of them were playing right.

So there are all of those signs that he's not doing too terribly.

Also, that's interesting, I mean, I mean, obviously you've already spoken to uh Gregor as well.

So yeah, it's clearly, I mean, there's no reason to panic Asset.

But I was going to ask you about how he's been like off the board, and I think you touched upon that.

I mean, I was curious to know whether he's like scenes under pressure or if he's like taking these things in his stride.

See when I I'll tell you one thing, Okay, Gukase is somebody who is incredibly resilient in that sense, because like you look at it that way, right.

If you remember the twenty twenty two Olympiad in Chennai, buksh was somebody who only needed a draw in the match against Husebekistan against If he had gotten a draw, India would have won the gold medal.

But Boukeish was the one who chose to go aggressive and instead of a raw, he had to lose.

That was a hard loss to take.

But he bounced back from it almost immediately, like it was one day of sadness and then he was back right.

So it's not as if Boukase has not experienced these heartbreaks.

He was on par to become the youngest grandmaster in the world in history, and he missed that target by seventeen days.

That was the one thing he was chasing with all of his heart and whatever, like all of his family's financial resources, right, and he missed that, But it didn't have that much of an effect.

It didn't like make him spiral or whatever.

One or two days later he was back to playing chest and he was okay.

Whatever I've seen from him in Goa, Like, I wasn't there when he was knocked out, obviously, but whatever I've seen, he does seem to be in a decently okay space.

You see the kind of fame that he has now garnered, and he's okay with that.

Also, you see all these kids who are like twelve thirteen, fourteen types who are suddenly calling him, touching his feet occasionally things like that, obviously, asking for autographs himself, and he's like, very chill with I've heard a bunch of people talk about there being no aura of a world champion, but I'm like, if you've seen Bookish before he became world champion, I don't think there was that much of a difference.

And you can't compare every player to Magnus Skulson.

So yeah, sorry, maybe I hope that answered the question about Bookish.

Yeah, that is perfectly what I was wanting to do.

I guess the next point is then, okay, so Boukish had a tough time.

I mean, booksh is already in the World Championship match and all that.

So the bigger artbreak technically is Urgent, right, I mean, once again missing out on candidates.

He was obviously the last Indian standing of the tournament.

I was joking with mine the other day in office saying, you know, I hope by the time you guys reached there, at least he's there in contention, which he was saying, I am afraid.

And then yeah, it turned out that way, as he's now out in the quarterfinal stage.

He probably had the toughest opponent in the quarterfinal.

I mean, I remember one link in mins report saying that that is probably a game worthy of the final argument versus where he is such a high quality contest.

And then I guess Urgent missed out in the tiebreakers, so he's going to for sure miss out on candidates.

Right.

There's no like back door entry or anything.

No, I don't think so, because the other back door entry now that he can look for is the one that Prug is going to enter and Prugue has a very handsome lead on that.

Yeah, Like I don't know how many tournaments they will have to organize for Orgin and how many people he will have to beat on a role in those tournaments for him to even come close to that.

But I mean, look, when I spoke to his former coach Aranan, one of the things that you mentioned was that, look, we try and think of this as like a race between Pruge Orgin Bukis.

Like Gukas is already world champion.

Prug is almost secure of making it to his second candidates in a row, and Arjun has not made it both times.

Like he's come close almost six times to three different parts over two World championship cycles, but he's not made it at the end of the day, But you have to realize that Arjun is twenty two Magnus I believe was twenty two when he made it to his first candidates, right, so the next time our candidates comes around, Arjun will probably be what twenty four, So it's not the end of the world.

Like see if with It or a pentala Rik do not qualify for the candidates, Yeah, that is maybe, like it's sad because they probably won't get an opportunity next time around when the cycle comes in.

But Arjun, I mean, for him, it's something that is only will to make his results stronger.

If you remember, the last time he did not qualify for the candidates, he basically decided to like write down all of his and just speaking metaphorically, not actually happened, but he basically wrote down all of his ambitions on a piece of paper and then burned it and he was like, Okay, I don't care about results anymore.

I'm going to beat whoever they put in front of me and all of that.

Right, So he went on that crazy tear after that heartbreak, and we are kind of hoping that that is what happens with like, Okay, you are not in the Candidates.

You will definitely not play in the World Championships, but there are so many other things in chess, like you could probably aim for the total World Chess Championship and become the first world champion in a new format.

Or he can win the World Rapid and Blitz, which is happening next month in Kata, that tournament he's never won, So.

There are other things obviously for him to try and and.

He's not like Bo who's like, you know, exceptional in classical but maybe not so much in rapid and brids.

Arzuin is not that Urgin can do well in pretty much any format you're ask him to be.

So there's that advantage.

When we talk about these three of the younger generation guys, right pug Arjun and the way they went about the World Cup?

Was there a trend that followed?

I mean, we've noticed that this World Cup was fairly unpredictable, not just for the Indians but overall.

The field was completely dynamite, and I mean every day there was someone crashing, a big name crashing out.

So for an Indian context, if we were to just narrow down these three and later on maybe we can talk about, say Pantala, who had a good tournament too.

In some ways, was there a common friend that these three kind of faced?

Me?

And I don't know if there was a common trend in a sense.

But look, the thing with Origin was that, as his former coach said that sometimes the side effect of his over ambitious play or over attacking play is that sometimes you overextend and you give your opponent a small window to attack you counter attack you and then you lose.

This has happened with Origin a few times, like he could have won Chenne Grandmaster's last year in December, and he ended up losing to the one guy who had never won a single game in that whole tournament, Whereas Origin was somebody who had never lost a single game until that point, so he was on that level of form, ended up being too ambitious and lost.

That is exactly what happened to him in this tournament.

Prugue I think looked very shaky from the start.

In the second round itself, he could have been knocked out, like he basically had to pull a few miracles out of the bag and escaped with Case.

I think it was one of those one of things.

You know.

The problem with the World Cup, as you mentioned that a lot of these top ranked players have fallen out.

I think way he remains the only top ten player in the semi final stage because Arjuna has been knocked out and I think a seeded second.

The problem with the World Cup is it is a knockout format, which chess players are not used to.

Like.

If you tell a badminton player that you will play a round robin tournament where you keep coming and playing every single day, even they will have to adjust a little bit because they're not fighting for survival in every single game suddenly.

Whereas chess players are ashold of, you.

Know, going through the end of the tournament, no matter how badly you play, which kind of eases the pressure in every single game because you are like, Okay, even if I draw this game, it's fine, I will come back tomorrow and I'll try and win.

Or that's a better opponent, I have white things like that.

So in such a context, it is bound to be unpredictable.

It is bound to be, as you said, called it a minefield.

It will be volatile because every single game that you are playing, no matter how high you are rated.

In fact, if you are rated higher, the pressure is much more on you because you know that one mistake you make, you are getting knocked out, right, But for the other players sitting in front of you, who's rated maybe two hundred points lesser than you, he's thinking, for me, what is there to lose.

I might as well like, just enjoy the two days.

I know that I'm probably getting knocked out by the end of two days.

I'll chill, right, So that is what we've seen, at least in terms of trend, we've seen a lot of these players, kind of the top, the elite players be under stress, play make inaccuracies against much lower players who they would probably definitely beat in a in a round robin tournament or a Swiss tournament, but in a World Cup where like every match is like a do or die in a sense, there it gets tricky for the top players at least.

And me just one more trend when we're talking about it.

I think Fred recently released a stat I can't recollect the exact number, but it said that something like a heavy percentage of players basically in the fifth round they played the Sicilian defense right.

What was it?

I think some seventy six games out of five point fifty saw the Sicilian defense right in the first five rounds of the World Cup.

Now, why is that?

The Sicilian is an opening with black which is known to give you fights, which is so popular for giving you like a lopsided contest, the center controlling all of those things that guys like Gary Kasprov and Bobby Fisher, who were known to be confrontational players on the board, they were champions of this opening and that was the opening that was most played in all the first five rounds.

That tells you a little bit that all these top players had to go try and pick fights, or all the lower players were like, Okay, that guy is feeling under the pressure, so I'm definitely going to try opening with the Sicilian and put him under pressure.

So that was at least one of the trends that I noticed.

Speaking of trends of it, one of the features that we had written towards the back end was how a lot of these players are looking at the first two classical games as an opportunity to just draw and go into the tie breaks and treat rapid and blitz as you know, their main venue to break the contest open because obviously there's a bigger risk taking a venue there and all that.

That's something that I think my also wrote about, right, that's interesting, Like, is that like a slightly concerning aspect for classical tests itself, that you know people are looking at it as just okay, let's play out a draw and then take it from there.

I mean, but in a sense, wink, if you look at let's try and draw comparisons here, if you look at cricket a lot of people might say that at the end of five days you're not assured of a win, right.

There are a lot of contests that end in draws or whatever.

So obviously, I mean, I know that maybe it's not comparable, but then you see where the comparison is coming from, because longest format, then you have the chances of most likely of attending as a draw all of those things, right, as compared to an ODI or a T twenty or a rapid or a blitz, right, So you obviously have that, and yes, it is a concern.

It is something that a lot of players, top players like Magnus Skulsson have spoken out about.

Even Daniel Dubov, who beat spoke about this.

In fact, Daniel Dubov, the Russian guy who beat Pragan on the I think the fourth round, his entire strategy at the tournament was this that in the first two classical games, especially with white, he will not bother at all.

He will try and get.

An easy draw.

And then with the black, when he had the black pieces, he would basically try and go to the other player into pushing and making a mistake.

Otherwise he's great at rapid.

He's been a former World Rapid Champion, so you take the contrast into rapids.

And win there.

It's not He's not the only player to have tried that strategy at the World Cup.

And it is a concern because the problem with chess is all the opening practice kind of heavily theorized.

Everybody knows or everybody has an interpretation of what is happening on the board and what your next five.

Moves could be, six moves could be.

Right, So the only kind of way to surprise your opponent is what Harry Krishna did, where he played like he offered up a queen for sacrifice in his second.

Round game or as early as the eighth move.

Now, the queen is the most powerful piece on the board.

And this man just gives it away for free on the eighth move and then still ends up winning, right, because he had surprised his opponents so much that I mean it worked.

So those kinds of things you'll have to do, because, as I mean, man had written a beautiful piece about how there's a lot of this that happens.

It's not just the World Cup, by the way, you look at the World Championship, a lot of those games and in draws.

You look at any tournament if it's classical, there are very few wins in a sense as compared to draws, because players know most of the opening moves and how to counter it right, so you don't get that battle, which is why maybe at the World Cup we've seen so many Sicilians, because people want that fight.

You want to pull their opponent into like a Dodo heart on the board innocence.

It's fascinating how this tournament has shaped up.

Just to kind of start trapping this up.

You had been there again, of course going there for the ultimate matches, the semi finals and the finals, but you there for the first week or ten days as well.

Just the setting and all the way you explained it was quite superb.

Especially I highly recommend all our listeners we should put the story in a show notes.

Just the it on the face of it looked like a very basic and the obvious thing to do, but I'm sure it must not have been.

Is what chess players do in between matches and just walking is what you said and beautifully captured the whole quote unquote importance I guess of walking for chess players.

But just how was it?

You know, a tournament like this at a place like go just by the beach, surrounded by the best chess players in the world.

It's a very unique setting in that sense.

Yeah, but I mean the big advantage of a chess tournament.

And I've been also talking to chess players a lot about, you know, playing in a fancy resort.

I don't know, fancy might be a subjective term, but yeah, in.

A resort at least.

And like I've asked all these players that, like, how unique is that?

And you know, chess tournament.

The one great advantage of a chess tournament is that you can host it pretty much anywhere.

So players have told me that they've played tournaments in like tense in Spain, players have played tournaments in front of an aquarium, in a zoo, all of those things, right, because I mean, that's the beauty of chess.

As long as you don't get too much noise from the background, you can play pretty much anyway.

So that was one thing.

And second thing you spoke about that piece that I wrote about walking, I mean, this was something that I found fascinating.

These players and their appetite for going on long walks is something else like Levon Aronan, who's now in his I thinka in his forties.

He's somebody who says that his the amount of walking that he does during a tournament is still the same as what it was when he was a young guy, and it's almost like he walks four hours a day.

And I saw like a live demonstration of this in between after he had qualified for the next round and there was a tie break.

One day, I saw him go on a walk with Washier Lagrau, the French Grandmaster.

I believe he returned somewhere around two and a half hours later, and I'm pretty sure he went on a walk because I saw him walk on the approach.

Howd there was no car that came to pick up He did not book a car through the hotel or whatever, So I'm pretty sure he went on a walk.

Then I saw the selfies that he had post from some beach that he had taken, and then on the same evening he again came back.

A few hours later he went on another walk with another guy.

Right, So that is the kind of crazy, Uh, this appetite for walking that I'm talking about.

You have all sorts of players.

You look at somebody like a Vishianan.

He told me that when he was playing in Waikanze, which is a small seaside Dutch town, he would go walking from that town to another neighboring town, which was I think what two hours away or something, one way walking and then he would walk in the town itself and then he would walk back to the town.

Right.

So that is the kind of walking that we were talking about in a sense that these players do.

They obviously walk in the middle of games from one place to whatever, just walking around while their opponents are thinking and things like that.

But yeah, away from the board also there's a lot of walking around.

Yeah, if walking was the only criteria, perhaps I would have made a GM.

So unfortunately, you know, India, we'll have to now make it with you, amit in the final few stages of this World Cup.

But it is great as always talking chess with you.

I think that's all we have for today, unless wants to talk about figure skaters doing well somewhere.

I was just talking about a WhatsApp forward that was saying to me, and just that made me wonder about, you know, the kind.

Of chess players being figure skaters.

No, there just tiny sporting events that perhaps we could mention on the podcast, but that's for next week.

I guess we.

Are mentioning a tiny sporting event on the podcast, which is the Feedday World Cup.

Sporting Aventa for the week.

Ugly barsam or we tiny events listeners, Klier, I think that's it for this week.

I guess.

Thanks guys, Thanks to all our listeners for tuning in to your another episode of game Time.

The band will be back next week with a new episode.

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