Indian champion

Yesterday, India’s Gukesh Dommaraju conquered the chess crown from China’s Ding Liren in the World Chess Championship organised by FIDE, a progressive organisation whose motto is Gens una sumus (‘We are one Family’), in the sense that humanity is one. Compare that neochristian nonsense with the motto of this site, Gens alba conservanda est.

As former chess champion Garry Kasparov has commented, both India’s Gukesh and China’s Ding Liren when the latter held the crown should better be called ‘FIDE champions’ because the real champion is still the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, even though officially he is no longer the champion. Carlsen still wins almost every major tournament and has the highest Elo rating in the entire professional chess community. By rating—the real parameter, not FIDE championships—the Aryan Carlsen is still #1 (see e.g., the ratings of the first twenty players in 2024), even though he has refused to participate in the latest FIDE championships for the crown.

FIDE has become politicised. In my day, it would have been unthinkable that a Russian player would have been banned from playing in official FIDE tournaments because of his political views. But in 2022, Russia’s Sergey Karjakin, the player who had come closest to taking the crown from Magnus Carlsen by Carlsen’s own admission, was banned from tournaments for supporting Putin’s military operation in Ukraine. Without that ban, perhaps the World Chess Championship that ended yesterday might have had a white face, Karjakin’s, as he could have challenged Ding Liren for the crown (or in the previous world championship two years ago when Liren beat the Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi).

In other words, the fact that for the first time in history there are no white men in a world championship, only an Indian and a Chinese, could be interpreted as a political decision. In any case, Gukesh’s emotions in the video linked above vindicate what I have said about chess: although it looks like a game of scientists, it is a tremendously emotional game.

Regarding the FIDE championship match that ended yesterday, I would like to say a few words.

It bothers me that several commentators, including some famous chess grandmasters, are saying that Ding Liren’s blunder in his last game with Gukesh is the most serious in the history of the world championships. That is not true! Here are three blunders in the world championships at least as serious as yesterday’s blunder by Liren during a drawish endgame. Those were the days when only those with white skin contested the World Championship crown…

Here we see the position between Mikhail Chigorin and Wilhelm Steinitz, before FIDE existed, for the World Championship in the 23rd game of 1892 (from 1886 to 1894, Steinitz was the first World Chess Champion). There were more than a thousand spectators in the playing hall and everyone was commenting on Chigorin’s brilliant play. Steinitz’s imminent surrender was expected. Suddenly there was a commotion when the Russian, instead of taking the pawn on b7, forgot that his bishop on d6 protected his king from being checkmated and moved it to the b4-square. Steinitz took the pawn on h2 with a check and everyone stood up when they saw Chigorin put his hands on his head. The obvious mistake that an ordinary amateur could easily see cost the Russian master from taking the crown from the champion Steinitz!

A second blunder of the kind that even players like me wouldn’t usually make, but which being human even the best chess players sometimes make because World Chess Championships get on the nerves of both participants, occurred in the 19th game of the 1929 match for the crown between Alexander Alekhine and Efim Bogoljubov in The Hague: a game that started with a Queen’s Gambit. In that endgame any player of my chess level (which is extremely modest compared to the professionals) would have played 70…Ke4 cutting off the white king, and the game would have ended in a draw. Instead, Bogoljubov played 70…Kg4?? and six moves later had to resign.

FIDE was organised after the death of the champion Alekhine in 1946, who had played tournaments sponsored by the Third Reich. In one of the FIDE World Championships when the Soviet school of chess was unbeatable, an error occurred that even a third-rated player could not have committed.

I am referring to the sixth game of the match for the crown between David Bronstein and Mikhail Botvinnik in Moscow in 1951. Bronstein, the twenty-seven-year-old challenger, played the champion Botvinnik, already forty years old. Inexplicably, Bronstein played 57. Kc2? and after 57…Kg3 by Botvinnik, Bronstein had to resign (57. Nd6+ and 58. Nd4 would have prevented the pawn from crowning). That match ended in twelve points for each player (one point for each game won; zero points for each game lost, and half a point for each game drawn) and Bronstein never won the championship title because FIDE had a curious rule. In the event of a twelve-point for each player in a twenty-four game match, the champion, in this case, Botvinnik, would retain his title. We can already imagine the implications of this blunder! But errare humanum est…

Above we see Alekhine (left) against Bogoljubov; a former champion, Emanuel Lasker (seated), and others watching. Compare the elegance of how chess players dressed a century ago and how they dress now. It is perhaps worth saying that, unsuccessfully, Bogoljubov disputed the crown with Alekhine in 1929 and in 1934, when Hitler was on the rise in Europe.

More civilised times, when the Aryan wasn’t yet a self-hater…