Cram school: The benefit factor in a chess league

For some GMs, the Global Chess League can also double up as an idea factory

- Rutvick Mehta

In a post-match evening inside the dinner hall of a five-star hotel in the city where teams competing in the Global Chess League (GCL) are put up, two large tables were connected together.

A team dinner was on the anvil for the upGrad Mumba Masters, which features two foreign stars in Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Wesley So, two leading Indian female players in Koneru Humpy and Harika Dronavalli, and P Harikrishna as the non-playing captain, among others. On the table was Indian food and, safe to assume, plenty of chess talk.

This was a setting so peculiar for a sport so individual.

Apart from the Olympiad, a team environment in top level chess is rare. It is what makes a franchise league like the GCL, held in India for the first time in its third season, a different experience for almost all participants. And, for the young and aspiring Indian players, an opportunity to rub shoulders with and pick the brains of some of the best in the business. The six-team league with six players each comprises an icon and a prodigy. At the Alpine SG Pipers, Leon Luke Mendonca, the 19-year-old GM from Goa, has for company three 2026 Candidates entrants - R Praggnanandhaa, Fabiano Caruana and Anish Giri. At the Ganges Grandmasters, Nagpur GM Raunak Sadhwani, 19, can call world No.4 Vincent Keymer and legend Viswanathan Anand his teammates.

Teams also have reserve players, and for the Grandmasters they are two 19-year-olds in Pranav V, the reigning world junior champion, and Pranav Anand.