The renowned mind whisperer to elite athletes who has helped the Indian cricket team on its way to the 2011 Cricket World Cup title and the Indian hockey team to a bronze at the Paris Olympics cannot help but beam with pride as he talks about the latest athlete he has worked with: 18-year-old Gukesh, who became the world’s youngest ever world champion in history after dethroning the reigning world champion Ding Liren.
Playing in your first world chess championship match is the trickiest test the sport has to offer. Even Magnus Carlsen, who is widely considered the greatest chess player in history, has felt his hands trembling when playing in his first world championship. Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand had told The Indian Express about how playing in a world championship plays tricks with your mind, throwing up moments of self-doubt, and panic.
Gukesh himself experienced two setbacks in the course of the battle against Ding Liren, suffering defeat in the first game itself. Just like at the Candidates. Then, the Chinese grandmaster handed him another defeat-shaped reality check in Game 12 right after Gukesh had won the previous game where it would have appeared the finish line was in sight.
The teenager bounced back from both setbacks with remarkable poise and with no-holds-barred chess at times.
“Everything about the way he’s managed himself throughout the tournament I’m exceptionally proud of. An 18-year-old in his first World Championship, he has managed himself exceptionally maturely. We were never expecting him to play the perfect move in every move or the perfect game every game or the perfect tournament for 14 games. It’s not possible to do that. He was always going to have some bad games, some average games and some excellent games,” Upton tells The Indian Express.
The South African reaches for a simple analogy to describe the state of preparations athletes go through to get ready for the toughest tests in their life on the field.
“If you want to do well in an exam or test, you need to study the whole book exceptionally well. Then you can go into that exam with confidence. You don’t go in with hope,” says Upton. “And in terms of studying the whole book for a World Chess Championship title, Gukesh has studied the whole book. In every minor bit of detail, down to how he manages his sleep, how he manages his downtime, to how he manages himself moment to moment within a game. We’re seeing an exceptionally well-prepared professional.”
While Upton understandably says that he cannot reveal specifics of what they spoke of in the past six months, they spent a lot of time discussing every aspect of his strategy in the minutest detail. At the world championship, Gukesh has frequently shut his eyes and appeared to be meditating at the board when his opponent has been taking long periods of time to think about his next move. A FIDE in-game stat even said he had spent as much as a half an hour in the first two hours of one of the games with his eyes shut on the board. While Ding frequently sneaks glances at Gukesh during games, the Indian has eyes only for the board.
READ MORE: How a rook-ie mistake cost Ding Liren the game, match and the crown
“We’ve discussed in minute detail about both cases: when he’s making his decisions about the moves to make and at the same time, how he’s managing himself and his mind while his opponent is busy planning his move,” says Upton.
“Other aspects of his strategy we’ve discussed is how to manage himself when he’s ahead in the game; how to manage himself when he might be behind in the game or under pressure within a game. We’ve discussed how he would manage himself if he’s ahead in the tournament, like one game up; if he’s behind, if he’s got a 6-6 position. So not only just within a game, but within the championship as a whole, it’s very clear strategies of how to manage himself when behind, when level and when ahead.”
Not just in match situations, with the world championship dragging on for three weeks, how Gukesh managed his downtime has also been crucial. Upton credits the team that Gukesh has built around himself — of which we only know about trainer Grzegorz Gajewski besides his father Dr Rajini Kanth — to prepare for the grind of playing at the world championship.
“Gukesh was as well prepared as he possibly could be for anything that might happen. When we say prepared, it’s everything from his sleep, his eating, his exercise, the way he manages himself before a game, during a game. That’s really just credit to his team and the people who have assisted to put his team together to ensure that he went into this test with confidence. He didn’t go there with just hope.”
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