The stunning progress of teen prodigies R Praggnanandhaa and D Gukesh in international chess has encouraged several parents to consider the sport as a serious ‘career option’ for their children.
Praggnanandhaa caught the imagination of the country when he reached the final of the FIDE World Cup after a sterling run through the tournament.
So, what does it takes to be a wizard on the board, and turn it into a viable career? Experts have their say.
Chess, in fact, is one of the least expensive sports to begin with, even with an initial investment as low as Rs 50.
But the journey forward to chess mastery is not that simple, though. It requires endless hours of practice, and years of dedication.
Pravin Thipsay, the first Indian to get a GM norm and currently the chairman of Indian trainers’ commission, explained the path.
“I had about zero investment. We learned the game ourselves by studying and discussing the moves and it took me about 600 matches to get to 2450-plus, (ELO) points,” Thipsay, India’s third GM behind Viswanathan Anand and Dibyendu Barua said
“Anand took about 200 games. If you are serious, 1000 games and analysis should be enough to take you there.“But there must be proper analysis of each game and make sure that you don’t repeat the same mistake. But if you lose (the match) the same way next time then even 10000 games won’t be enough,” Thipsay said.
Thipsay said parents should not adopt shortcuts to success with a GM title alone in mind.He cited the example of Tamil Nadu GM G Akash, also a two-time consecutive national champion.
“He is never in the Indian team. GM is a very low target we have set.
“We have 83 GM’s in the country now and more than 2000 across the world. Before 1998 there were less than 300 GMs, so what happened to them,” he noted.
Mikhail Botvinnik, the renowned coach of legendary Garry Kasparov, had stressed on four fundamental pillars for becoming a champion — natural talent (25%), health, endurance, and stamina (25%), the character of the individual (25%), and preparation (25%).
But today’s parents give their all to preparation.He further cited the example of the early 2000s when Kolkata produced a slew of GMs in Surya Sekhar Ganguly, Sandipan Chanda, Neelotpal Das and WGM Nisha Mohota.
“They were the result of group discussions. They would sit together, discuss the games and not seek the help of computers.
“It does not happen any more these days because parents don’t have time to bring the kids together at one place.”
“Parents should understand that there are no shortcuts, you can have zero investment and still get the results in chess, by sheer hard work,” Thipsay added. (PTI)
