Gukesh used that ’Bridge!

D Gukesh (left) and Viswanathan Anand during the Tata Steel Chess tournament at Kolkata in September 2023. Pic/AFP

The meteoric rise of Dommaraju Gukesh from a talented teenager to the youngest-ever world chess champion at 18 has made the sporting world to stand up and applaud.

The youngster flying high and then soaring with remarkable speed and perfect accuracy towards his destination only remind one how he so innocently yet emphatically declared a few years that he would do the incredible.

Natural talent and temperament were the biggest contributing factors but the wind beneath his wings was the WestBridge Anand Chess Academy (WACA), spearheaded by five-time World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand.

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India's D Gukesh with the FIDE World Chess Championship trophy in Singapore on Friday. Pic/PTI

WACA is a collaboration between Anand and Bangalore-based WestBridge Capital spearheaded by Sandeep Singhal. The online academy started in 2021 to create a platform to facilitate mentorship in nurturing young chess talents in India. The speed with which the players enrolled with WACA and blossomed in the last four years promises is extraordinary. And there's more laurels to come.

Many prominent names

Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, R Vaishali, Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi, Nihal Sarin Raunak Sadhwani, Avantika Agrawal were the first few to propel Indian chess towards glory over the last couple of years. India's first-ever gold medals at the Chess Olympiad in both the Open and the Women's section had WACA players performing prominently.

As for Gukesh, he has been totally coached, polished and financed by WACA with Anand taking a keen interest in his journey. Anand's experience at the elite level be it in terms of chess preparation, strategy or choice of coaches to strengthen all aspects of his game have benefitted Gukesh immensely. It added that much-needed confidence to navigate the rough terrain smoothly. In fact, Gukesh and Pragg attended group classes initially and benefitted from them.

Anand prefers to call these prodigies his "WACA kids" and understandably takes pride in their achievements. "Initially, when we started with Gukesh, we envisaged a five-year progress to an ELO 2750, but his speed has been phenomenal," said Anand.

Informal approach

Things are rather informal at WACA with the enlisted players sharing their files of the games played with Anand who then goes through them and after evaluation, assigns a coach to match the playing style of the player. There are no time-frames or structured rules but proactive collaboration of the players with their coaches is given prominence when considering further assistance.

Former World Championship challenger Boris Gelfand, Grzegorz Gajewski (part of former Team Anand for the World Championship) and Sandipan Chanda were the initial trainers at WACA. Now, Vishnu Prasanna (Gukesh's previous coach) and Shyam Sundar have also been enlisted. Anand added, "WACA has been working with several new players like Savithshree, Pranav Anand, Pranesh, Aditya Samanth to name a few and established ones like Abhimanyu Puranik, Rakshita Ravi and a few more apart from the ones we initially started with. Fifteen-year-old AR Ilamparthi and Arvind Chithambaram have joined recently. We have been focusing on Leon Mendonca with extensive personalised coaching as he is set to play at Wijk Aan Zee in January."

Singhal of Westbridge Capital, added: "All chess related decisions are taken by Anand and the Academy is structured on his experience. If there is a talent and an opportunity to help, WestBridge is always ready."