Youth march – Newspaper Kommersant No. 5 (7450) dated 01/13/2023

The next chess season opens with a super tournament starting on Saturday in the Dutch Wijk aan Ze, which is notable primarily for its composition, which contrasts sharply with the traditions of the most notable chess competitions. Among its 14 participants, there are 5 players at once who are not even 20 years old. However, such a solid representation of teenagers reflects the trend of the previous year: in the course of it, juniors achieved tremendous success.

The Super Tournament in Wijk aan Ze, now called the Tata Steel Chess Tournament, is one of the most respected and prestigious chess competitions. And his 85th release managed to attract attention even before the start. It’s all about the unique, actually anomalous composition of the participants.

Chess has one feature that distinguishes it from many individual sports, such as tennis. It lies in “closeness”, especially when it comes to traditional super tournaments like the Dutch one. Their organizers are trying to invite only eminent and experienced grandmasters. Very young players who do not yet have a rich track record get a chance to play at a noticeable super tournament very rarely, they have to wait for their turn for years.

In this sense, the competition in Wijk aan Ze has always been considered quite democratic. But in any case, it was relative democracy. Each of the three previous Dutch tournaments had two chess players under the age of 20. But now the situation is quite different. She looks amazing considering her chess habits.

Among the 14 participants in the Tata Steel Chess Tournament, of course, there is a solid group of award-winning celebrities. This is the world champion in all major chess formats Magnus Carlsen (the Norwegian, however, announced last summer that he would not defend the “classic” title), and the second number in the rating, the Chinese Ding Liren, who will fight in April for the becoming vacant title with the Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi, and the Americans Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So and Levon Aronian, and the Dutchman Anish Giri, and Richard Rapport, who decided that he would represent Romania instead of his native Hungary. But the highlight is that five junior chess players will compete with them at once. These are three Indians – Arjun Erigaisi, Pragnanandha Rameshbabu and Gukesh Dommaraju, Uzbek Nodirbek Abdusattorov and German Vincent Kaimer. Erigaisi is 19 years old, Kaimer and Abdusattorov are 18 each, Rameshbab is 17, and Gukesh is 16 years old.

The presence of so many juniors to those who do not follow chess too closely may seem like a strange quirk of the organizers. In the end, none of them are even in the top twenty of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) classification, and Gukesh Dommaraju, who is located above all, occupies the 24th line. But in fact, the step taken by the leaders of the supertournament fully corresponds to the fresh trend.

The fact is that in 2022 there was a real youth breakthrough in chess, and each of the five teenagers who came to the Netherlands took an active part in it. Dommaraju and Abdusattorov were the main characters of the World Chess Olympiad in Chennai. The Indian showed incredible results on it, taking 9 points out of 11 possible, and the Uzbek grandmaster led his team to sensational gold. In addition, Abdusattorov already has the title of world champion in rapid chess, obtained at the end of 2021. At the World Chess Olympiad, Erigaisi also played well with Rameshbabu, who twice managed to defeat Carlsen himself in other competitions during the last season. Kaimer took second place at the December World Rapid Championship, only behind the great Norwegian and beating Nepomniachtchi and Caruana on the way to silver. In order for the rating of these chess players to correspond to their real strength, they, most likely, lack only the successes that sharply raise them in the top tournaments for the elite.

Alexey Dospekhov