44th Chess Olympiad | Viswanathan Anand: Russia and China's presence wouldn't have "changed the dynamics very much"

Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand (File image: Reuters)

In late 1945, even as the ashes of the World War were cooling, a chess match was organized between the USA and the USSR. The American team was at the top of the world, dominating the Olympiads, winning four in a row in the 1930s. The Soviet team were all unknowns, mostly young Grandmasters in their 20s. Yet the Soviet team swept aside the Americans, proving that a new red star was shining in the chess firmament.

Such an inflection point seems to have been reached again, with the India 2 team, comprising mainly teenagers, toppling the American top seeds in the ongoing Olympiad in Chennai. “It feels like we are watching a changing of the guard,” said commentator GM Peter Svidler, pointing out it was not an isolated result, as the Indian kids were “doing well against household names day after day”.

Having Viswanathan Anand as the team mentor certainly helps. He has plenty on his plate, overseeing six teams in all, with 30 players. How hands-on is he? He explains, “As a mentor I try to be available, now mainly to the coaches … so I try to stay in touch with the coaches if they need something they can reach out, so R.B. Ramesh (the coach of the India 2 team) and Shyam Sunder (coach of the India women’s team) in particular I’m keeping in touch with.”

As for the precocious teen talent he says: “One day I visited the India 2 team in the morning, tried to chip in a bit, but it is very hard to get into their routine like that, these are all super-professionals with trainers and coaches that they’ve been working with a long time and I think it’s just once in a while they may like to reach out to me that’s all.”

American FM Dennis Monokroussos, who runs the Chess Mind substack, says: “The India 2 team consists of monsters in their mid-teens who will probably all be at or very near 2800 by the next Olympiad.”

More importantly, the team is playing cohesively as a unit, when R. Praggnanandhaa lost, B. Adhiban picked up the slack. This is essential for the team aspect in an individualist game. That they have each other's back.

As we enter the final laps, some titans have crumbled. Monokroussos is candid, “I've been disappointed by the USA team's performance so far, but it's a testament to how ridiculously strong they are that even with two players having a poor time of it”, they are still in contention.

Concurs Anand, “Even the US, which I expected that because of their rating dominance would somehow stay above the fray, but in fact they are very much down in the mud fighting with every other team, they have not been able to break away certainly.”

Monokroussos points to some key stars in the US lineup not firing as expected, “Fabiano Caruana and Sam Shankland…have both played far below their normal level, and Levon Aronian hasn't had a great event either. Leinier Dominguez has been our star so far, and it's only thanks to his wins in rounds 4 and 5 that we managed to draw the match with Uzbekistan and win against Israel”.

However, Monokroussos sees Poland, which was tipped to go far, as the biggest disappointment so far. “It is in a surprising and relatively deep hole,” he says. “They are the fifth seed but only in 32nd place, having drawn with Romania and France while losing to Serbia. Their top player, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, drew his games in all three matches, and while he faced quality opposition in those games, Poland cannot succeed without his playing like the top player he is.”

Duda, in fact, would go on to a shock loss against the Philippines, and has not made an appearance since then.

Monokroussos says, “I've been high on India 2 from the start, and view them as the most dangerous of the Indian teams.”

As the race heats up, the elephant in the room of course is the absence of perennial favourites Russia, due to geopolitical reasons, while China withdrew due to its zero Covid policy. Anand doesn’t believe their presence would have led to a much more closed finish, “Yes, on average their rating is higher than most countries but it doesn’t matter,” he says, pointing out that even the US is struggling and their presence wouldn’t “have changed the dynamics very much, I think they would also struggle to break away. Especially if the US is doing so, then why assume they would not?”

“So (it is) pretty much the Olympiad we would have anyway,” he concludes.

While the open tournament is still a messy fight, in the women’s section, India is far better placed. Anand says, “The thing I really want to emphasize is the women’s team, they have done a phenomenal job.” He points to WGMs Tania Sachdev and R. Vaishali as having a “fantastic” run. “Vaishali played a masterpiece,” he says, while “Humpy won a crucial game against Dganidze” in the match versus Georgia.

On the format, former challenger GM Nigel Short had tweeted, “The Swiss System is only good at determining the strongest & weakest teams.” This means the results in the last couple rounds can disproportionally affect a team’s chances. India 2 has pulled ahead of the main team but has also shown flashes of inexperience. Intriguingly, Dennis says: “The only thing the Indian team captains did wrong was to put Adhiban with the kids and Erigaisi with the old-timers. They should have been consistent and flipped them around.”

With the finish line in view, there are complex permutations with India, USA, Armenia all in the mix for gold. On the dynamics, says Anand, despite leaders, “while there is quite a chasing pack, in fact here the leads don’t get very big because they are so many teams that somebody or the other is always nipping at your heels”

The aspirants for a podium finish are all slugging it out in the top five boards, indicating a wild stampede in the last couple of rounds.