One last time from Cyprus! Sindarov and Vaishali are World Championship Challengers
Who will become the new World Champions?
From the CEO
I am writing this newsletter from Cyprus. There is something truly wonderful about staying back a couple of days in the same place where the tournament takes place. All the action has shifted to the places where players have returned back to - like Tashkent where Sindarov landed and Chennai where Vaishali just landed yesterday. As I sit in my airbnb finishing all my videos, articles, pending tasks, I feel the joy of finishing my work without having appointments coming up! During a chess tournament, each day is a race against time. From the time the round ends, to the time, the next round begins, you have to publish everything you have captured. Anything that is missed out, diminishes in value usually as the next round will bring with it another wave of content. By the way, I must say I love the adrenaline that one gets during the tournament - it’s just that after an event like Candidates, you do like some quiet time! In any case, in the next couple of days we will be back on our way to India. I will be travelling to IIT Delhi on 24th April with Pragg being there to play the students. From the 1st of May we already will have Arjun Erigaisi in action taking on Magnus Carlsen, Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus and others at Tepe Sigeman!
But before more things happen, let me share with you some interesting pointers from the Candidates tournament 2026. These points are in no particular order as such.
1. The Uzbek Government Support
Javokhir Sindarov won the Candidates event and when he went back home, he is awarded with the Mehnat Shuhrati Award. When I searched on Google about this award, it said, “The Order of “Mehnat Shuhrati” is awarded to citizens of the Republic of Uzbekistan for outstanding achievements that contribute to the development of the economy and culture of Uzbekistan, the increase in the well-being of the people, and the preservation of peace and stability.” Wow! that is absolutely epic, isn’t it. Javokhir Sindarov through his moves is making an impact on the well-being of the people in his country. That sort of feeling when you give to your sports players, is when you get 2 players in top 5 in the world from a population of 37.5 million people.
2. Vaishali’s expressions
Think about this - in a field that had Zhu Jiner, Goryachkina, Tan Zhongyi, Anna Muzychuk, Divya Deshmukh, Bibisara Assaubayeva and Kateryna Lagno, R. Vaishali won the event. This is truly special. I especially loved how Vaishali kept her nerves in the final game. And when she won and came out, I loved this image with her mother Nagalakshmi. It is like both of them are in disbelief. Wow! I am going to play inside the glass cubicle for the World Championship Match against Ju Wenjun - kind of expression!
3. The value of being positive:
With AI coming into the world, a lot of the tasks that were being done by human beings is now being done by the AI. In such times when the machine helps us to bridge competence, what starts becoming even more valuable is how you are as a person! :) I could sense this quite a lot at the FIDE Candidates. Players didn’t want to hang around with competent people - they wanted to hang around people who made them feel relaxed and at ease. Like how 19-year-old Pranesh became a part of Vaishali’s team for his happy and jovial character, how Mukhiddin has become a permanent part of Javokhir’s team now, but he began as his good friend! When we asked Mukhiddin Madaminov, what % of his work is chess and what % is just keeping Sindarov in good spirits, his answer was 60% is about the mood!
4. Goal Setting:
One of the most interesting interviews we conducted at the Candidates tournament was with IM Roman Vidonyak. He is the coach of Javokhir Sindarov. He spoke about how he began working with Sindarov in January 2025 and since then has done 9 camps with him, each one of 10-14 days and in each day of the camp, working on chess for 8 hours without a computer - just with your mind! Apart from this, he did mention about two Gukesh’s that exist - the current Gukesh, who is not in his best form, and the monster Gukesh who we saw during 2024. According to Roman, one of the reasons why Gukesh is currently where he is, is because of wrong goal setting. Gukesh set the goal of becoming a World Champion and he achieved that. Roman adds, “It would be better to have a goal of dominating the world of chess for 20 years like Kasparov and Carlsen!”. Well, maybe Gukesh will update his goals and come back in top shape soon. :)
5. Thiyagrajan and love for chess
GM R.B. Ramesh - the current coach of Pragg and Vaishali spoke about Thiyagrajan - the first coach of the siblings. He gave Thiyagrajan a huge credit for instilling the love for chess in the youngsters. Love for chess is a wonderful base on which one can build many things in a player! In the case of both Pragg and Vaishali, Thiyagrajan did an incredible job of making them fall in love with the game.
6. Anish Giri’s perspective
Anish Giri in his marathon interview (2 hours 41 minutes - yes we really did an interview that lasted so long!), mentioned a very interesting phenomenon. He said, “A few years ago, there were many grandmasters who would tweet about certain positions that were interesting, or opening preparation that was good during a tournament like candidates.” However, now we don’t see that happening. Players who come to mind, who used to tweet about chess positions are Erwin l’Ami, Surya Ganguly and a few others. What has changed? Have their priorities changed, has the game changed, or has the audience changed which makes them feel a bit left out. Anish feels that the chess viewers no longer have the interest to understand the deeper nuances of the game. Maybe it is just the nature of how chess viewership is evolving. What are your thoughts?
Thanks all for reading this and see you again in a week! :) - Sagar Shah.
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