Aronian's massive move and early chess memories

BACK when Levon Aronian was the king — he prefers lion — of the chessboard for Armenia, he was being treated like a rockstar in his native country.

- SWAROOP SWAMINATHAN

Serzh Sargsyan, then the Armenian President, was a friend of Aronian’s so he used to fly victorious Olympiad teams back in presidential jets. The Armenian team had made winning at the Olympiad a hobby, with Aronian leading them to victories in three editions in 2006, 2008 and 2012 (the country is one of the global leaders in terms of GMs per capita).

Even otherwise, Sargsyan, a chess aficionado who doubled up as the head of the chess federation, used to splurge when it came to the board game. It was on the school syllabus, innovation was the buzzword and supercomputers were a tool available to the likes of Aronian so that they could train and get better. In fact, months before Aronian had led the side to gold in the Open section in 2012, a landmark reform held that chess was going to be a compulsory subject in school, like mathematics and science.