‘It’s about time… India needs another Vishy Anand’

Nobody in Lotis Key’s family played chess. But great chess players entered each of her and her sisters’ lives at some point in time. In the case of Lotis, chess remains very much a part of her life. She is the adoptive mother of Wesley So, the World No. 8. She is also his manager. She is much more though. She has also been an actor, novelist, horse-raiser and social worker.

So became a part of her family during one Christmas season. “My older sister once hosted Bobby Fischer [the former World champion who revolutionised chess] and the younger one dated Eugene Torre [Asia’s first Grandmaster] in college,” Lotis told The Hindu in Kolkata recently. “And I met Wesley at the house of one of my husband’s friends in Minnesota, where Wesley was staying at the time as he didn’t have money for a hotel; he was a student and was making some money by playing tournaments.”

Since So had no place to go to for Christmas, he asked Lotis’ daughter (on the family’s only mobile phone) whether he could visit. Eight months later, he began living with them full-time. He was not sure if he could be a professional chess player, but Lotis told him that she would support him financially for a year. In less than a year, he had entered the world’s top 10.

So, who was estranged from his family, had moved to the United States from the Philippines on a scholarship. “That was the best decision of my life and I was 17 or 18 at that time,” he says. “Chess was dying in the Philippines then. The prizes were getting lower, as were the allowances for the players from the government. The country had a lot more to worry about than running chess. Basketball, boxing and billiards are the most popular sports in the Philippines and there was no place for chess.”

Chess in the Philippines

But the game was once very popular in the Philippines. “Everyone knew how to play chess,” So says. “I think the year 2008 was the peak of Philippine chess. We had eight or nine Grandmasters. After that, the game tapered off. I was No. 100 back then, but I could not make a living from chess in the Philippines.”

But he didn’t have plans to switch his nationality. “I just went to college,” he says. “And I could understand why India’s Parimarjan Negi left chess for the sake of his academics. He is my age and he used to be a very strong player. I wasn’t surprised when he stopped playing. Not everyone can be a professional chess player. There are a lot of other good things to do. He is very bright. It is very difficult to be a professional chess player if you are not as good as Vishy Anand.”

Like Anand, So too was a prodigy. In 2007, he became a Grandmaster at 14, the youngest from the Philippines. The following year, he broke Magnus Carlsen’s record as the world’s youngest to touch 2600 Elo points.

His career really took off a few years after he moved to the United States, the country he represented at the 2016 Chess Olympiad. At Baku, he won the individual gold on the third board and helped USA win team gold, too. That year also saw him win the Sinquefield Cup, London Chess Classic and the Grand Chess Tour.

The Carlsen experience

In 2017, he produced one of his best performances to win the Tata Steel Masters at Wijk aan Zee (the Netherlands), a full point ahead of World champion Carlsen.

“Finishing a point ahead of Carlsen felt nice,” he admits. “I was playing really well at that time and my performance at the Olympiad had given me a lot of confidence. But the turning point for me was the 2016 Bilbao tournament in which I lost to Carlsen [So had won the tournament the previous year]. You learn a lot more from your losses than victories.”

So, what did the 29-year-old learn from the defeat to Carlsen?

“That you need to be tough and you need to do hard work to make it,” he says. “You need to be patient and study your opponent’s games.”

That seems to have worked for So. In 2019, he defeated Carlsen to become the first ever Fischer Random World champion (the format allows the players to be more creative than theoretical, as the pieces are placed not on the normal squares, but randomly).

“Beating Magnus in any match is a big deal,” says So. “I waited for him to make a mistake [a strategy Carlsen usually employs against his rivals].”

So thinks the Fischer Random version (it’s also called Chess 960) could be the future of chess. “It is a lot more original,” he says. “The problem with [traditional] chess, compared to other sports, is that you play the first 15 or 20 moves from theory and that is not very exciting.”

Shortly before coming to Kolkata, he had won the inaugural Chess.com Global chess championship, which had a total prize fund of $1 million. His share, after beating Indian teenage prodigy Nihal Sarin in the final, was $200,000.

“It turned out easier than I thought,” reveals So. “I didn’t have much expectations. I had to win six matches. And you could easily get knocked out. The final against Nihal was a tough match. Nihal had beaten a lot of strong players to get there. The crucial game of the match was the third. He was winning with black pieces but he failed. And after that, it was all downhill for him. Had he won the third game, anything could have happened.”

He is mighty impressed with Nihal and the other Indian teenagers — D. Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi and R. Praggnanandhaa — who are taking the chess world by storm. “They are all very dedicated, well-coached and have parental support,” says So. “They are from the same generation and that helps. I think some of them work together. And I think it is also about time. India needs another Vishy Anand. Now India has five or six very good players.”

Of them, he feels Gukesh is India’s best bet. “He is the youngest and was extremely impressive at the Chennai Olympiad, where he won his first eight games in a row on the top board,” So says. “He is really focused, and he loves the game. And I have found Arjun has a burning desire to improve. I won’t be surprised if Gukesh and Arjun make it to the world’s top 10 in the next few years.”