Tuesday, May 13TRUSTED FEARLESS,FAIR,FRESH,FIRST NATIONAL INTERNATIONAL NEWS PORTAL

Tag: Viswanathan Anand

Leon Mendonca, the Goan chess whiz known for Hawaiian shirts, attacking chess and appetite for big scalps
No Comments
Sports

Leon Mendonca, the Goan chess whiz known for Hawaiian shirts, attacking chess and appetite for big scalps

At the recently-concluded Grenke Freestyle Chess Open 2025, a new terror on the chess board emerged from India: 19-year-old Leon Luke Mendonca, who defeated players like Ian Nepomniachtchi and Richard Rapport and ground out draws against grandmasters like Alexey Sarana, Wesley So and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. After the nine-round event ended on Monday in Karlsruhe, Leon was 10th in the standings out of 297 players. Of these, 31 players started the event with a better rating than the ever-smiling, bespectacled boy from Goa with a penchant for Hawaiian shirts and attacking chess.For Leon, who became India’s 67th grandmaster in 2020, moments under the bright arc lights on the global stage have been limited. His rise, after all, coincided with India discovering its golden generation with stars l...
Read More
When Viswanathan Anand won eight rupees as prize money for winning an event
No Comments
Sports

When Viswanathan Anand won eight rupees as prize money for winning an event

Viswanathan Anand is one of the richest chess players in the country at the moment, having racked up plenty of prize money from his exploits around the world, including winning the coveted World Chess Championship five times. But there was a time when a much younger Anand had won just eight rupees as prize money for winning a junior tournament. Anand revealed this in an interview with The Bombay Journey recently while being driven around his home city of Chennai. Asked about the costs involved in being an elite grandmaster and the prize money top chess players can make, Anand said: “I remember once in my chess club they had a small tournament and first prize was eight rupees. So I thought I can treat myself. I (won and) took this eight rupees. There’s a hotel right behind the chess club, ...
Read More
‘Means a lot to me that my parents don’t have to think about money anymore’: Gukesh
No Comments
Sports

‘Means a lot to me that my parents don’t have to think about money anymore’: Gukesh

Current chess world champion D Gukesh opened up about his parents’ struggles before his success, revealing that they had to depend on the generosity of friends to support his international tournament expenses. “I remember my parents’ friends sponsoring me to play tournaments abroad. It was quite difficult at that time, and we had a lot of help from very, very nice and selfless people. Now, the last year was financially very good for us,” Gukesh said at the ‘India Today Conclave 2025’. “I think it means a lot to me that my parents don’t have to think about money anymore. We can lead a comfortable life, not struggle like before,” he added. Gukesh is India’s youngest grandmaster, missing the tag of becoming the world’s youngest by just 17 days. He’s the youngest-ever winner of the Candidates ...
Read More
How Chess.com became more than just a chess app and Titled Tuesday spiced up a routine weekday
No Comments
Sports

How Chess.com became more than just a chess app and Titled Tuesday spiced up a routine weekday

Around the time Gukesh Dommaraju became the youngest world champion in history of chess in December, Indian chess also made its mark elsewhere. On the popular Chess.com app, India overtook the USA as the “most active country” on the platform, another indicator that not just the protagonists in the thick of action, but spectators following it were also overwhelmingly from India.Right after the three-week battle between Gukesh and Ding Liren in Singapore culminated with the teenager from Chennai become the second Indian to be crowned the world champion after Viswanathan Anand, Chess.com saw what it called a “Gukesh wave”: for three straight days, the app hosted 17 million games daily — the highest daily number in 2024 — at a rate of 15 more games starting per second during peak hours. In the...
Read More
Freestyle organisers drop ‘world champion’ from regulations ahead of Weissenhaus event
No Comments
Sports

Freestyle organisers drop ‘world champion’ from regulations ahead of Weissenhaus event

There was a temporary truce in the world of chess after FIDE announced that organisers of Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour had removed the phrase ‘world championship’ from their regulations. This means that the winner of the Freestyle Chess Tour will not be officially called a Freestyle World Champion, as the organisers had initially intended. “Today, the organisers of the ‘Freestyle Chess Tour’ fully deleted from its regulations the reference to the ‘World Championship’ title. Following this change in the regulations, players wishing to participate in the 2025 ‘Freestyle Chess Tour’ are no longer required to sign the waiver note,” FIDE posted on their social media handles. The intent of Freestyle Tour’s organisers to crown the winner of their event as a ‘world champion’ had been the sticki...
Read More
Freestyle organisers drop ‘world champion’ from regulations ahead of Weissenhaus event
No Comments
Sports

Arkady Dvorkovich responds to personal texts being leaked: ‘Cannot deal with a partner who has such business culture’

FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich has accused organisers of Freestyle Chess of leaking personal texts sent by him during the terse negotiations over the past few months. Dvorkovich told The Indian Express in an exclusive interview on Tuesday that messages that he had sent Jan Henric Buettner, the man behind the freestyle chess tour, were being shared with players ‘within seconds’ during the negotiations. FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich speaks at an event during the FIDE World Chess Championship in Singapore last year.(PHOTO: FIDE/Maria Emilianova) After talks between FIDE and organisers of Freestyle Chess collapsed on Monday, Buettner posted a long open letter addressed to the FIDE president where he also made public personal messages sent to him by Dvorkovich. Soon, this was followed ...
Read More
As FIDE vs Freestyle Chess war intensifies, Magnus Carlsen, trainer share private text messages from FIDE president, CEO
No Comments
Sports

As FIDE vs Freestyle Chess war intensifies, Magnus Carlsen, trainer share private text messages from FIDE president, CEO

The FIDE versus Freestyle Chess war intensified late on Monday after peace talks collapsed between the two parties. In the immediate aftermath of the feud reigniting, there were open letters from both sides with fresh allegations. Members from the Freestyle Chess camp also aired private messages from FIDE officials like president Arkady Dvorkovich and CEO Emil Sutovsky. World No 1 Magnus Carlsen posted a couple of texts that Dvorkovich had sent to his father Henrik Carlsen on his X handle before asking the Russian to resign. Story continues below this ad Carlsen posted on X: “Coercion of players, misuse of power and broken promises. FIDE President Dvorkovich, to convince me to play the Rapid & Blitz in New York, you wrote Dec 19th to my father: ‘Just want to pass a mes...
Read More
FIDE vs Freestyle Chess dispute continues as ‘intensive negotiations’ lead nowhere
No Comments
Sports

FIDE vs Freestyle Chess dispute continues as ‘intensive negotiations’ lead nowhere

The global governing body of chess, FIDE, has announced that talks with the organisers of Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour have not yielded much as the impasse continues in chess. “Despite intensive negotiations, the FIDE Council states that there is currently no agreement regarding the Freestyle Tour. This is due to the other party’s refusal to acknowledge FIDE’s status as the sole regulator of World Chess Championships and its authority to award a World Championship title,” FIDE posted on their X handle on Monday afternoon. It went on to add that it would be releasing a “full statement” on the matter later on Monday. Story continues below this ad FIDE and organizers of the upcoming Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour have been at loggerheads for over two months now. This fe...
Read More
Exclusive: FIDE and freestyle chess organisers close to amicable agreement after 2-month-long dispute
No Comments
Sports

Exclusive: FIDE and freestyle chess organisers close to amicable agreement after 2-month-long dispute

The prospect of ‘war’ looming over the world of chess seems to be easing up after the organisers of Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour and FIDE are close to an amicable agreement, The Indian Express can reveal. After two months of uncertainty in the sport punctuated by open letters and allegations against each other, a ceasefire appears likely. In fact, over the past three days there have been three one-on-one phone calls between German entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner, the brains and financial muscle behind the ambitious freestyle tour, and FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich to smoothen out matters. “I already had two phone calls with Arkady yesterday and the day before, and we’re going to have another one today. I can tell you that we are pretty close to reaching an amicable agreement that w...
Read More