The siren rings, and the ‘death match’ begins with a thousand spectators roaring and cheering in anticipation. But the players aren’t WWE professionals boxing the teeth out of their opponents’ mouths — they’re contemplative chess masters barely moving, their eyes on the chessboard. They have trained for months, mentally and physically, for the four-hour competition.
Organised by ChessBase India, a pioneer chess news portal in the country, the tournament aims to smash the stereotype of the quiet, bespectacled nerds who excel in chess.
“There were 1,000 people watching the game with excitement and we don’t know how four hours passed by,” says Sagar Shah, an international master and co-founder of the Mumbai-based portal.
Shah wants to turn chess into an appealing game to watch and play. He wants to encourage both children and adults to take up the sport that India excels in but one that’s seldom covered by mainstream media.
At the death match in Phoenix Marketcity in Kurla, two 28-year-old grandmasters — Aneesh Giri from the Netherlands and Vidit Gujarati from India — played 20 matches with each other.
Shah has primped the quiet board game with all the hooting and whistling one sees in physically taxing sports like boxing, wrestling, or tennis. In the death match, opponents sit inside a boxing ring with a chessboard between them. They enter the ring with the same aplomb and gravitas as boxers, and the match is punctuated with timeouts and strategic breaks when they go into a huddle with their trainers. Audience members listen to the commentary with headphones so it doesn’t disturb the players.
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Chess club is hottest block in the mall
Every Saturday, Phoenix Marketcity buzzes with excitement over chess — knights and rooks, kings and queens moving on 8×8 boards are hot topics among visitors.
In the lobby of the mall sits an international chess master playing white to a budding champion’s black. As the clock ticks, the audience watches the game, analyses it, and tries to come up with their own tricks to eliminate the same mistakes. This is ChessBase India’s weekly Chess Club, free for all.
The setting comprises 50 tables and chairs and about 100 players, which includes seasoned professionals and hobbyists, children, and novices. And the hall is always packed, showing how ChessBase India has redefined the sport.
Many chess enthusiasts seek guidance from Sagar Shah — an international master himself — and try to get an opportunity to play with him, or simply click a selfie.
Six-year-old Rahul is a grandmaster-in-making and visits the chess club every week. The first grader is serious about improving his game. “I am also getting him chess coaching. So, this club is a great way for him to just play with other players. It’s great exposure,” his father, Dheeraj, a retailer, says.
Like Rahul, kids and adults alike enjoy the weekly chess club, now in its 43rd week.
The space for the club was provided by the mall for free. Passersby and shoppers make a pitstop at the club where it’s free to play chess with complete strangers.
Devraj, 48, is a regular player at ChessBase India — the club has fulfilled his dreams. “I last played chess competitively in college. After that I just played on the phone and computer, but the joy of playing chess physically, interacting with other people in such a thriving space visited by grandmasters and led by an international master is truly a dream come true,” he says.
Supriya Bhat, director of marketing, ChessBase India, said that the club attracts a huge crowd every day. Regular tournaments with prizes ranging from Rs 1,000 to Rs 10,000 also make it an attractive space for people to keep coming back.
And the Chess Club is all-inclusive — from older men coming to Carter Road with their friends complete strangers mingling with each other to teenagers bonding over chess with Shah.
Kunal Gupta, 17, hasn’t missed a single Saturday in the past 43 weeks. “I have no interest in studies. I love chess, want to excel in the game, and make a career in it,” the high-school student says.
Elevating the sport
India currently has 76 men grandmasters, 124 men international masters, and 18 women grandmasters. The country has challenged the status quo of US and Russia in international chess. But these chess players are hardly known — you would be sitting next to a grandmaster and have absolutely no clue who they are. ChessBase India is changing all that and attracting more and more teenagers like Kunal to elevate the sport.
Shah founded ChessBase India in 2016 with his partner Amruta Mokal, a former under-16 chess champion. They started the company to identify and resolve issues plaguing Indian chess in terms of watching and broadcasting the sport. “The players did not have the best technological tools like software or books, they were not easily available in India. Media coverage was also lacking,” Shah says. He wanted to give chess players visibility.
And the 2020 lockdown only brought chess into more Indian homes. It increased ChessBase India’s popularity, with streaming and viewership skyrocketing. Now, the online portal has amassed more than a million subscribers on YouTube and about one lakh people visit their website every month.
Stand-up comedians Samay Raina and Biswa Kalyan Rath too released videos on chess commentary.
The website offers player statistics, chess news, tutorials, and match analyses. And Shah’s rapid, lively commentary makes it even more thrilling. Much like Harsha Bhogle in cricket, Shah offers masterful commentary that offers chess enthusiasts a chance to understand the sport better. When players take long pauses to think about their next move, Shah gives psychological insights and analyses the game on screen, building intrigue: “What are they going to do now?”
It’s a sport that has a lot of drama but no action.
Shah, though, is convinced that change is coming. And he says that with the help of technology, chess can become even more thrilling. “Chess is seeing growing audiences. Today’s artificial intelligence (AI) engines are very strong and could even defeat a grandmaster. This is represented through a bar on the screen. You’ll see in whose favour the bar is, which adds to the excitement of the game.”
Other ways in which ChessBase India is making chess interesting are broadcasting live commentary, putting a timer to build desperation, or displaying the heart rate of the players on screen. “Chess looks like a calm sport on the surface, but players’ heart rate reaches 160-170 beats per minute — just as it does for any other athlete. Through technology, we’re making the game much more engaging,” Shah says.
The co-founder plans to take Chess Club to cities beyond Mumbai.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)