India's dramatic chase for the chess gold in first online Olympiad

Win in the first online Olympiad may just have a similar impact on the game as the 1983 World Cup had on cricket

There can only be one”. This truism drives sports. Everyone wants a winner, any winner — no matter how closely matched a sporting contest. Absurd forms of hair-splitting can be applied — remember the last cricket World Cup?

However, the first online Chess Olympiad broke with that tradition of manufacturing a winner. The gold medal will be shared between the finalists, India and Russia. While this is the umpteenth chess achievement for the Russians, it is the first world team gold for India.

It may just have a similar impact on chess as the 1983 World Cup had on cricket. Taking analogies further, the Wankhede Stadium, where Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his boys lifted the World Cup in 2011, has a capacity of approximately 33,500. There were over 65,000 Indians logging in to watch the Olympiad final live.

The online Olympiad format is experimental. It was hosted by the website, Chess.com, after the cancellation of the normal biennial Olympiad. Each team had a 12-player squad (with Srinath Narayanan as India’s coach, Vidit Gujrathi as captain) and fielded six boards per match. Three boards were open (anyone could play), one had to be held by a woman and two had to feature players under 20, one of each gender.

A league led to a knockout quarter-final, followed by semi-finals and finals. Each knockout involved two matches with alternating colours. If the matches were split, there was a single-board Armageddon game.

The match games were played at a rapid control of 15 minutes each, plus an increment of five seconds (five seconds added back when a move is made). In Armageddon, white gets five minutes while black gets only four. But black gets draw odds — if the game is drawn, black wins.
 

The format favoured India for a few reasons. India fielded a formidable set of grandmasters, including former world champion Viswanathan Anand, Pentala Harikrishna and Gujrathi. But other teams could match that strength.

 

 

Where India scored was in its depth on junior and women’s boards. The women’s board rotated between two Top Ten players in Koneru Humpy (world #2) and Dronavalli Harika (#9). The junior boards rotated between two brilliant teenaged Grandmasters, Nihal Sarin and Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, and the highly talented 14-year-old Woman International Master Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agrawal.

All the juniors are seriously under-rated and all are even stronger at fast controls. Sarin and Praggnanandhaa have won blitz and bullet games against reigning world champion, Magnus Carlsen.

It was no cakewalk. The league stage featured one draw versus Mongolia when Humpy and Gujrathi got disconnected while playing advantageous positions. India fought back with three back-to-back wins, including an upset victory over world champions, China.

The quarters versus Armenia saw a major controversy involving disconnections. In Match One, five games had been tied, and Sarin was a little better against Grandmaster Haik Martirosyan, when the latter suffered a disconnection. The Armenians appealed. But the match was awarded to India and the Armenians also conceded the second match in protest.

The semi-finals against Poland were wildly exciting. India lost the first match and broke back to win the second, setting up an Armageddon. In that, Humpy played black with the draw odds against Grandmaster Monika Socko. The Vijayawada-based grandmaster held her nerve to deliver checkmate with a few seconds to spare.

The finals were crazy. The first match was tied, with six hard-fought draws. In Match Two, three games had already been drawn. The match result depended on the three remaining games. Humpy was about equal against Aleksandra Goryachkina; Sarin was equal against Andrey Esipenko; and Deshmukh was clearly winning against Polina Shuvalova. Indian fans had their fingers crossed. Gold was in sight if Deshmukh won, and Humpy and Sarin drew.

Then Chess.com disappeared! It was a global internet outage that led to many websites going down, and India was among the worst-affected regions. The causes are still being debated 

since there are, of course, implications for the global economy.

The Indians appealed. In technical terms, the Russians won since the Indians apparently disconnected. But the appeal was upheld because the Chess.com website was unreachable (along with Zoom, Hulu and many other sites) while the Indians clearly had connectivity.

The outage continued through Sunday evening, ruling out tiebreakers. Hence, the World Chess Federation, FIDE, which is led by a former Russian minister, Arkady Dvorkovich, split the medals. Naturally both teams would have been happier with a medal without a footnote. Nevertheless, it is India’s first world team gold and that could have a huge impact on the Indian chess ecosphere.

The Indians logged in from locations as diverse as Prague (Harikrishna’s residence), Nashik, Nagpur, Chennai, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Thrissur and Delhi. Every major Indian politician sent congratulations on social media. So this could mean more sponsors, more exposure and more players on the 64 squares.