Kid’s Gambit: A peek into the centres training Chennai's future chess prodigies

CHENNAI: It was around evening. The KQ Chess Academy in Mylapore was bustling with children who came to the academy straight from school. Bags kept aside, notes by their side, pencils in their hand, and minds abuzz working out the moves while being engaged in one-on-one games.

Among them was a boy with glasses, with his hands on his chin, discussing what move to play with his friend. After thinking deep for a while, he made a move and asked the coach if that was the right one to play in the endgame.

“Attack with the bishop, the king will be trapped and a mate is there,” advised Vinothkumar, a FIDE master-turned-coach who started the academy. The boy’s face lit up, as he quickly took the pawn and replaced it with the bishop. It was clear that he understood the move that the coach suggested and the several successive moves that flowed from it to induce the checkmate.

While this was happening, there was another eager kid, barely seven years old, who could hardly contain his excitement. As his friend was discussing the move with the coach, he kept interrupting, thrilled about his looming checkmate.

Welcome to the chess factories of Chennai. They function out of rooftops, crammed rooms in street corners, and larger spaces in schools that want a share of the glory that the prodigies bring home. Many of them are small and crammed for space. What is not in short supply is sheer talent that borders on genius.

In the recent years, they all have one thing in common: they all are kids who can barely carry their heavy school bags, but possess minds that have the potential to slay the masters from around the world. As a popular meme goes, they win themselves crowns and thrones at an age when many of us were enamoured by the automatic fridge lights that turns off when the door closes.

CATCH ’EM YOUNG

The fascination of parents wanting to make their kids next superstars has become a familiar story across sports. The starting point is different in different sports. In cricket, it begins with underarm throws on crowded street lanes; in motorsports, children are introduced to go-karting; in basketball, it’s about learning to dribble. For chess, however, the journey starts with a simple black and white board setup on a table and someone patiently explaining the movement of each piece.

Behind its deceptively simple façade, chess is an adult’s game that is more complicated that any of the physical sports. Unlike the latter, a player often faces someone who is much older, much more experienced. But as Chennai has shown, there are a lot of gifted kids who are extremely good at it and exhibit extraordinary aptitude for the game, sometimes overwhelming even the seasoned players.

The game is only getting younger and younger, with children aged just 12, 13, or 14 are acquiring Grandmaster titles like they’re collecting school trophies.

Every boy or girl earning a Grandmaster title – like Praggnanandhaa R and his sister Vaishali R, and Gukesh D did in the recent times – encourages dozens of parents to dream such a future for their children. And they beeline to academies dotting across Chennai in search of a master teacher who can help their children achieve their potential.

The 2022 Chess Olympiad held in Chennai was a landmark event. It wasn’t just a global chess extravaganza which brought together different countries under the same roof. It turned the spotlight on the "Mecca" of Indian chess and also enabled young players to witness their compatriots take on icons and succeed.

Before the main event began, a one-day, open curtain-raiser, rapid tournament took place. For the organisers, it was meant to test everything before the main event. But for the dreamy children, it became a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play in the same hall and boards as the ones they aspired to be.

Among the thousands of players competing in seven age-group categories was six-year-old Takkshanth Anand, for whom it was the big tournament of his life.

His father, Anand, recalled the experience: “Attending and playing in that Olympiad was a big motivation for him. That was the first time he played on the DGT chess board and with comfy chairs. That elevated his interest in the game even further and he got to meet a lot of GMs, IMs which helped him,” he told DT Next.

NURTURING A PRODIGY

Takkshanth’s chess journey began during the pandemic when he was around 5-and-a-half years old. Stuck at home due to the lockdown, the boy took to chess, a game that his father used to play a little. Early victories in local tournaments revealed his potential. That's when his parents approached Vinothkumar in KQ Chess Academy to nurture his game.

Vinothkumar is a FIDE master who started his chess journey back in 1991 and earned his master title in 2009. He transitioned into coaching after many parents approached him and started the academy.

“I became known as a player, and parents of kids aiming for national and international tournaments started reaching out to me for personal coaching. As I saw more interest and my students performed well, I decided to take coaching professionally. Eventually, I realised that there was also a strong interest in beginner-level coaching, which led me to start my academy,” said Vinothkumar in a conversation with DT Next.

Vinoth’s approach to coaching is holistic. He stresses on the importance of making the young ones understand the fundamentals and make sure they balance the game with other commitments to shape into a better player.

“Chess is an easy game to learn but challenging to master,” Vinoth explained. “It requires discipline, focus and consistent practice. Participating in two tournaments a month, for instance, can take up to 12 days, requiring a delicate balance between practice, competitions, and other commitments like studies.”

Takkshanth spends around four hours a day playing chess. It includes attending class, solving puzzles, playing games, etc. But that’s just on normal days. When tournaments are around the corner, the hours spent training would go up drastically.

“There will be some lag in studies because there are times when he isn’t attending classes. But if you want to go into chess professionally, you need to compromise on studies. The balance would be to make them study when there aren’t too many tournaments,” said Anand.

HOW DOES THE KNIGHT MOVE

How is the game taught? Well, it does change from one child to another but there are some common steps which are followed while training a kid.

In chess, every move has a name, every action on the board can be part of a well-known tactic or strategy. After learning the basic movements of pieces, children begin to recognise that each move can lead to a particular position or opportunity, many of which have specific names like fork, pin, skewer, etc.

As players start to gain experience, Vinoth would stop dictating every single move and instead guide them with hints or strategic ideas like saying ‘the king is weak’ or ‘we have a bishop here’. The children are also given workbooks with questions and puzzles which they can solve.

But the only way to gain actual experience and improve in the game is to attend tournaments, be it the neighbourhood ones or rated tournaments. Once they get the feel of playing in an environment other than what they are used to, they start to learn beyond the board.

After triumphing in the district-level competitions, Takkshanth got his big break last year when he won the National School Chess Championship in Patna, the biggest in the country in terms of the number of participants.

There were 885 players competing for the title in six age group categories. Tamil Nadu bagged more medals than any other State last year. His victory gave Takkshanth a chance to compete in the Asian Schools Chess Championship in Thailand where he won a silver and two bronze in the team category.

His brother Vishprajesh Anand won a silver and a bronze in the same tournament. It was their first international trip.

As Anand explained from his experience, when it comes to shaping careers and future, there is one aspect that plays an even more crucial part than participating and winning tournaments, one that hits families very hard: money.

HERE COMES THE MONEY

Unlike what many casual onlookers and cheerleaders who join the bandwagon after titles are won, chess is an expensive sport. Chasing professional success and aiming for greater achievements create a sizable dent in their parents’ pocket.

According to Vinoth, most parents enrol their kids into academies or start to play chess at five or even four-and-a-half if they already have a brother or sister playing.

Even from the first stage, they need coaching support from renowned names in the chess world. The fee that the academies charge varies according to the needs of the player. The charges can be per hour, day, month, or even for just one tournament. Bigger tournaments entail special coaching, another added expense.

It’s one thing to play chess to become a rated player, but going for IM and GM norm is a whole other ball game. You need to register a rating of 2600 in the tournament and play at least three Grandmasters and players from other countries.

Local tournaments charge an entry fee ranging from Rs 1,200 to Rs 12,000, while national-level events cost more. Apart from these, the children need training materials like online courses, books and software, etc.

Add to this is the travel and lodging cost, not just for the children, but also their parents who accompany them. That there are many tournaments being held in India has helped the cause, but for persistent results, they need to attend events abroad, which would cost a lot.

“Players who are achieving big are getting sponsors. But is that enough for them to participate in tournaments held abroad? It is difficult to say. There are a lot of opportunities to acquire sponsorships. But they would get sponsorship if they have already performed in those big tournaments abroad. So the question is whether one can actually afford to go to those tournaments in the first place,” said Vinoth.

There are many tournaments but Takkshanth and Vishprajesh’s parents, both of whom are working to support their children’s career, have to pick and choose which one to take part in depending on their chances.

“Our children participated in the Asian Schools and the National U-9 tournament in Pune last December. These two itself drained a year’s savings. We are saving up now and focusing on key tournaments like the FIDE World Cup and Commonwealth Chess Championship. We are also looking for sponsorships, without which it would be impossible to participate in these.”

CHESS ENGINES, AI, AND THE MASTERS

In modern chess, players rely on powerful engines like Stockfish, Leela Chess Zero and Komodo to analyse their games and improve strategies. These engines help players analyse mistakes, simulate opponent’s strategies, provide training exercises, and master endgame studies with precise calculations.

Elite players use high-end engines and cloud-based supercomputers, which can cost anywhere between $100 and $500 per month for premium access. While free versions of Stockfish are available, professional players invest a lot more in dedicated chess servers and databases like ChessBase.

From the iconic match between legendary Gary Kasparov and Deep Blue in 1996, where the former lost to the supercomputer, artificial intelligence (AI) in chess has come a long way. Among the ongoing battle of the AIs was an interesting one organised by Levy Rozman (famously known as GothamChess). He has been conducting online tournaments between AI models, with the most recent one between ChatGPT and DeepSeek.

The moves that were suggested by these AIs border on the insane. In one of those games, DeepSeek played a move where its queen was open to be captured just in its fourth move. But ChatGPT had predetermined it and did not capture the queen; it instead played another move. Those were astounding tangos that human matches would never see.

GOLDEN AGE OF INDIAN CHESS

Last year was as great as it can be for Indian chess. There were five Indians participating in the prestigious Candidates Tournament, the youngest World Championship contender, and later the youngest World Champion, Gukesh D from Tamil Nadu.

In the middle of this, the Indian team won a double gold medal in the 45th Chess Olympiad. This was a clear sign of a growing chess culture not just in terms of big players achieving historic feats but also budding talents climbing the ladder.

NOT A GAME OF AGE

It is not like kids who are doing well are smart from the start, or that the rise to the pinnacle is reserved only for those who started playing while in their diapers. Everyone’s way to the top is different. We have had enough chess players who grew over the years, MS Thejkumar from Karnataka, who was 36 when he got his GM title back in 2017.

TN PLAYERS WHO MADE HISTORY

Manuel Aaron - 1st International Master from India (1961)

Viswanathan Anand - 1st Grandmaster from India (1988)

R Vaishali -1st female Grandmaster from TN (2023)

Vijayalakshmi S - 1st Woman Grandmaster (WGM) (2001)

Gukesh D - Youngest World chess champion (2024)

R Praggnanandhaa- Youngest finalist of FIDE world cup ever (2023)

GRANDMASTERS FROM TAMIL NADU

Viswanathan Anand

Sasikiran K

Ramesh RB

Deepan Chakravarthy

Sundarrajan Kidambi

Laxman RR

Magesh Chandran P

Venkatesh MR

Arun Prasad S

Adhiban B

Sethuraman SP

Shyam Sundar M

Vishnu Prasanna V

Karthikeyan Murali

Aravindh Chithambaram Vr

Ashwin Jayaram

Priyadharshan K

Srinath N

Praggnanandhaa R

Gukesh D

Karthikeyan P

Visakh NR

Iniyan P

Akash G

Arjun Kalyan

Bharath Subramaniyam H

Pranav V

Pranesh M

Vaishali R

Total - 29