Meet Arjun Erigaisi, the Chess Madman

Winning six games in a row in chess is like hitting six sixes in a single over in cricket: easy to imagine, but difficult to achieve.

In chess, the most famous six-game winning streak was achieved during the 1971 World Championship cycle, when Bobby Fischer demolished Mark Taimanov 6-0 in the Candidates quarterfinals.

Five decades later, India’s Arjun Erigaisi scored 6-0 in his first six games at the 45th Chess Olympiad in Budapest, playing a significant role in India’s first triumph in chess’ most prestigious team tournament.

Although Arjun Erigaisi’s results came against six different opponents, some of whom were not highly ranked, it has cemented his reputation as the greatest young star in world chess, who is likely to climb to the top of the rankings if he continues on the same trajectory.

The Telangana grandmaster eventually finished with 10 points in 11 games, winning nine and drawing two, which allowed him to remain unbeaten in the tournament. He won an individual gold medal on board three. The highest-ranked player he beat in that series was Dominguez Perez Leinier of the United States with 2740.

Arjun Erigaisi, 21, is the highest-ranked Indian chess player in the world, ranked fourth before the Olympiad, and is expected to move up one place to third in the updated rankings with a live rating of 2792, gaining 14 Elo points in one tournament.

Born on 3 September 2003 in Warangal in Andhra Pradesh (now Telangana), Arjun started playing chess with his friends and for fun. It was his nursery school teacher in the temple town of Tirupathi who advised Arjun’s parents that playing chess would be beneficial for him as Arjun had a great comprehension ability and could recite the multiplication tables backwards and knew the capitals of 70 countries and their currencies.

Seeing his interest, his neurosurgeon father decided to train him at the age of 11, getting him admitted to the BS Chess Academy in Hanamkonda and then to the Race Academy in Kothapet in his hometown Warangal.

The youngster enjoyed a meteoric rise after 2017, becoming a Grandmaster in six months at the age of 14 years, 11 months and 13 days. Over the next six years, Arjun became India’s strongest young player, part of the golden generation of Indian chess alongside D Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa and Nihal Sarin. A player with a keen sense of positioning, Arjun fights for every inch of the board, sometimes without caring about the end result. It is this uncompromising quest for victory that led Magnus Carlsen to nickname Arjun Erigaisi “the mad man on the board”.

Arjun is a fast learner and has worked with many coaches so far including GM Victor Mikhalevski of Israel, his compatriot Srinath Narayanan and is currently being coached by former FIDE World Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov who has been associated with Viswanathan Anand, Fabiano Caruana and Sergey Karjakin in the past. He is also a big fan of online learning and interacts with his coaches online most of the time. Adept at playing complicated positions, Arjun is a quick fighter and thinker and most often finishes a game with more time on the clock than his opponent.

In 2021, he became the first Indian to qualify for the Goldmoney Asian Rapid section of the Champions Chess Tour and also won the Rapid section of the Tata Steel India Chess Tournament (Rapid and Blitz).

In January 2022, Arjun won the Tata Steel Chess Challenger 2022 and thus entered the Top 100 in the world rankings in the classical format. In March of the same year, he won the Indian National Championship and went on to claim the Delhi Open crown by beating D Gukesh and Harsha Bharathakoti in a tiebreak. In August 2022, he won the 28th Abu Dhabi International Chess Festival and the following month, he crossed the 2700 Elo mark.

In December 2022, Arjun won the Tata Steel Chess India 2022 Blitz, his third title in Tata Steel events so far.

He continued his title streak in 2024 by winning the Menorca Open A in April and the Stepan Avagyan Memorial 2024, his sensational performance culminating in a memorable display of no-holds-barred chess at the Chess Olympiad in Budapest.

While the spotlight has shifted to players like Nihal Sarin, Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa in recent years, Arjun Erigaisi has quietly climbed the rankings and rankings ladder, moving from 100th to 4th in just over two years, surpassing former world champion Viswanathan Anand along the way to become India’s highest-ranked player.

His mesmerizing performance in Budapest added even more sparkle to his aura, reinforcing his reputation as the brightest star in the chess firmament.

A fan of the legendary Garry Kasparov, Arjun Erigaisi is keen to emulate his idol and Indian legend Viswanathan Anand by becoming the recurve world champion. He may have missed his chance in this cycle where India’s Gukesh will challenge China’s Ding Liren for the title, but Arjun doesn’t seem too far from vying for the crown soon.

Arjun’s sensational performances over the last two years mark him as the best candidate to become the second Indian to cross the 2800 mark. He also seems destined to become a world champion one day if he continues on the trajectory his career has followed so far.

The chess fool will continue to perform magic.

(This article has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – IANS)