Yours Truly in the Indian Press
Jaideep Unudurti interviews Anand and your scribe on the Olympiad
It has been a while since I’ve been in contact with Indian journalist Jaideep Unudurti, but his connection to my blog goes back quite a few years. It was a pleasure and an honor to have him solicit my views on the recently completed Chess Olympiad in Chennai, India, and you can see what I had to say (and more importantly, what Viswanathan Anand and others had to say), here. (N.B. My comments were made before the rest day, either after round 4 or round 5, if I recall correctly.)
Disclaimer beforehand: not disagreement or criticism, but curiosity and context:
"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."
That's a bold prediction for 2024, two years from now - a bit but not too much dependent on the definition of "very near".
Of all 2800+ players present or relatively recent, only Carlsen and Firouzja managed to get from 2700 to 2800 in about 2 years (2 years and 4 months to be precise). For Carlsen, it may have been a bit faster if rating lists had been monthly at the time, for Firouzja without the pandemic.
4 years seems "standard" or average/median: Caruana (while already close - 2796 - one year earlier), So, Vachier-Lagrave. Giri was relatively fast (3 1/2 years to get close, 2797, and cross 2800 live) but remained "stuck below 2800" ever since. 5 years for Aronian, 6 years for Ding Liren, 6 1/2 years for Nakamura, 7 years for Radjabov to reach 2799.6 live. And the extremes Nepomniachtchi (10 1/2 years to reach 2797 live) and Mamedyarov (11 1/2 years).
Do you consider ALL young Indian players to be "as exceptional" as Carlsen and Firouzja? A case can be made for Gukesh, the others on team India 2 still have to cross 2700. Or do you expect things to go faster nowadays in general, also for non-Indian prodigies (Abdusattorov, Keymer, maybe also Niemann while he is already 19)? Of course, any prodigy may still follow in the footsteps of Wei Yi (rising star that quit rising).