I, V, M. I have been working in a company and myself with extra Husky sexy voice. Yeah. So how have you been, Tori?
I'm actually coming onto the podcast after a long time. Yeah. I should be asking you. Yeah.
You went around the world. Let us are foreign chocolate. Yeah. So I had a good month, month and a half in the US.
Yeah. Going to many places. And directly that I came back we went off to another vacation on somewhere in the first week of August to Punk. And therefore I was absent.
taking a vacation and growing a big belly and I also happen to have a medical exam and all my number gone for a toss so it's starvation from me for me from no one. No more ice cream. No more ice cream. I have you cut something else out of a diet which will make for you another super simplified episode.
I'm supposed to so I have basically cut out carbs and the infernal things are in everything so you can't really cut anything out because if you're living civil society and people keep giving you food and you keep saying angry and then they stop offering you food. You're a carb based life from anyway. Yeah I have a carb based life from me. So yeah I just it's just back to Bombay and trying to get used to the rain.
The rain itself is lovely no problem the rain but the roads are basically gone for a toss so yeah it's it's difficult. It's a standard thing in Bombay all Bombay guys like how Londoners keep complaining about whether Bombay guys keep complaining about the roads. I'm disappointed you've brought only green cut behavior no green cut accent home. Oh yeah actually I've been I've been dropping subtle sort of hints that I've got so I call Ladyfinger Okra and I say cilantro instead of coriander so subtle you know very subtle I don't want to tell you and I'll say oh you went to the US?
Oh yeah yeah yeah. Very good. Very good. So yeah and otherwise I'm really happy to be back because I was mostly in the Bay Area it's pretty cold and I realized that I hate cold weather.
I just it's about 16 or 18 degrees C and the wind you used to degree setting. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah actually even more subtle I would have just mentioned it in Fahrenheit. Yeah correct exactly. But yeah it was so cold and everyone else ok the local guys would be really walking around in short-shroom t-shirt but Sheilan I were like completely swaddled like Eskimos sort of waddling around all over the place.
How many people picked their start up to you? Yeah actually I I'd hire a man who was willing to throw on the air. You just in the Bay Area you just had to go sit anywhere coffee shop, railway station, beer 39, anyone. Someone will come along and pitch us but unfortunately no one pushed me to me but yeah that's that's something which speaks more of me than the locals.
No this means that you don't have a sticker on your forehead that says idiot. That's a document. It's a distinction. Cool so what do you want to talk about?
So today I want to talk about one of my favorite sports like so you can have arguments whether as a sport or a game but it's classified to sport which is chess. So I'm very passionate about chess and I'm terrible at it. All the more reason why people people didn't pitch you startups like you have the intellectual heft to not be throwing many other things. Yeah chess.
Yeah so chess I'm inordinately fond of chess and I waste hours and hours on you know sort of watching chess on YouTube or playing it or whatever and I just love the game. I'm terrible at it. I've been playing since college days and never managed to achieve anything of any distinction. I managed to get on the college team once because they needed four people and there were exactly four people who including me who knew out of chess so like knew the moves and I obviously got my butt kicked but I acquired a healthy respect for the game and for a period of time.
It's very you know it means a lot of thinking. It's very stimulating, very challenging, very absorbing and so yeah it's been a passion with me and the reason I wanted to talk about it was very recently India hosted the 44th chess olympia in Chennai. The first of the videos was circulating of the you know of the promo and the intro and the main thing. It was quite a spectacle and the intensity was dressed up.
Main bridge one of the sort of landmark bridges there was completely covered in you know the chessboard squares everything and I saw that on the what's up I believe it's called the NPA bridge as our previous entry. Bring this. Yeah. That was you know everything was really the production values were great and this is unusual for for India and especially for chess because when I was growing up chess was very very niche sport.
There wasn't much sponsorship. There wasn't most people you know they had to saw one of our mutual friends Amitwarma was a you know he was a college level chess player and he used to participate in chess tournaments and he talks about going to chess tournaments and being asked to sleep like you know in one big hall just on the floor and there was really nothing no facilities or no encouragement. But I guess that was the only thing. He just said he was a sport then because all the sports people like that.
All the sports people like that. That's what he says. He says that they had to share that hall. You know like there would be a hall housing 300 people and there would be two toilets and like you know everyone had to go and muscle their way and then use the toilet and you had to the chess players who were basically 90 pound weakling had to go and compete with the wrestlers and do the dokas and daksa.
They were the last days. But they would strategize and make sure they got it. But I apparently did work with my mother that the that Qaldim of his chess playing at least his competing fever that he gracefully stepped out and didn't bother going back. But this time they spent so it's it's the story of how India got to hold the chess on empire is the story back.
But what does it hold him? Yeah. It sounds like one of those talent search examination kind of something you do. So it's man so it's one grand jamboree all the countries in the world are saying their teams.
Roughly four players plus one result of a five five percent per country and sometimes more. Like the Davis Cup in tennis. Yeah sort of Davis Cup. And Olympia because you know to emphasize the sort of United Nations character of the whole thing.
Everybody in the world plays it. And it's held once in two years unlike the Olympics which has held once in four years. So this is held by by the near not by annual by any by any of the idea. So this is you know this is a regular and India wasn't even supposed to host it.
It was to be hosted in a town called Kanti Manciisk. So Kanti Manciisk is in the USSR. Oh not just you know whatever the Russia or someplace. Daddy Russia.
Yeah. And Russia sort of negligently sort of went to war with Ukraine. So the powers that be said no no you can't host it. Which is kind of makes sense because how do you get into the country and get out.
And when all this was happening the secretary of the All India chess federation on Gaineyam Bharat Singh Chawan. So he texted the president of Fideh who's a Fideh is the body that like for soccer Fideh is the body that controls chess internationally. It's the French acronym for chess federation. FIFA.
Yeah. There is no C anywhere in it though. Yeah chess is pronounced HXEC. Oh.
HXEC is. So the audience concase is coming to. Yeah, the audience concase is well named. HX.
Okay. But why is it French like doesn't chess have its origin somewhere in India or something? Yeah. So the French they could have been Russian.
It was so in India and it had a pretty ancient history and people went around the fifth or sixth century under the Kukta Empire. There was a game called Chaturanga and Chaturanga was you know, it's like people have written about it and mentioned it and things like that. And enough has been written about it to reconstruct it. So they know the names of the different pieces.
They know the name for example, the queen, the piece which you know is the queen is known as the minister. Yeah. And the minister actually. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. It's one three. Yeah.
It had its origin and then it went to Arabia, you know, Arab lands. And there Chaturanga became Chaturange. Oh, okay. And from Chaturange, it went to Europe and I know somebody who's been having too many beers or wines or whatever chain converted Chaturange to chess.
So that took a lot of beers or wines or whatever they were drinking at that time. And from the 15th century onwards, it was widely played in Europe, all of Europe. And the rules were slightly different. They're the modern rules of chess slightly, but not by much.
Yeah. And it was a game of the elites for a longest time. Okay. So general general educated people and those kind of like the upper classes.
Knowledgeable. Knowledgeable. Knowledgeable. Yeah.
Yeah. So very rightly it was handling Chennai because as we all know Chennai crowd is knowledgeable. And they, I mean, Europe, I mean, people played chess for a few hundred years. Till someone decided to document the rules.
They realized that moves could be written because it's an eight by eight square. So you can. Yeah. So there are two notations.
Yeah. E four and E five. That's called the algebraic notation. But back in the day, people used something called the English notation, which was, you would say pawn two kings forth.
Not in the English. We should have to be shut fifth place or something. Yeah. So, but the point was that people started annotating games.
Yeah. And this basically people played correspondence chess as well, right? That's in like basically. Yeah.
That came. Yeah. That came later. Yeah.
So that's the thing about the story called the Gossage and Warby DB in papers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, so notations. Yeah.
So then people started, you know, writing things down. And you could play over games that someone else had played. And, you know, sort of analyze moves. Yeah.
So you can, you know, on the fifth move, somebody moved a knight instead of a bishop. And that had a profound effect on the game. And maybe he won the game. So you try and figure out what it was in that move, that made it so powerful.
And as time went on, you know, an entire body of theory got created around this thing. And people started understanding principles. So for example, one of the principles is development. So, you know, you're not a starting position of chess.
When you start playing with someone else, your idea is to develop as many pieces as possible. So that once your army is out, you can fight, attack or defend much better. Then if your army is just behind a wall of bonds. And the second is people figure out that if you control the central squares, the center is called.
Yeah. The mobility of, so, you know, your pieces control it. So you can obstruct enemy pieces and you can facilitate your own pieces. So they found that and then some things.
Some things. And political strategy also. Yeah. A lot of these, there's this guy named Gary Kasparov.
You must have heard. He wrote an entire book about how chess is life and he's just like mapping chess principles to life principles. I haven't read the book. I'm pretty sure it's boring.
But they've done that. But even if you played just a little bit, the amazing thing about the symmetry and this is the sheer beauty of how the pieces and the board work. Yeah. The geometry of the, you know, so there is a genre of chess, called chess problems.
Right. So it's a predetermined. So if you and I are playing, it could be any position. It follows.
But I could compose the chess problem like a crossword. It would be very cleverly composed and there would be one key move. And only if you find the key move and the key sequence, can you solve the problem? And the problem solvers talent lies in making a problem unique.
So there has to be only one solution and no other solution. Nice. And it shouldn't be obvious at all. And they use a lot of these geometric principles, like feature of geometry.
So you know, you're on a diagonal and something is on a file and that found the right triangle and then somewhere. Another piece comes either deflects or obstructs or, you know, sort of that's something else and changes the, you know, changes the configuration totally, changes the solution totally. Yeah. You're basically prey to Python, the Gorus and.
Yeah. I think the one of the guys. Yeah. So have you played this game called really bad chess?
No, no, no. I haven't. Really bad chess is basically. Yeah.
It's basically you were playing against an AI and it has a score from zero to 100 in terms of like the difficulty. So you don't have, you have the regular chess board, but not the regular chess pieces. So you might have like, let's say, five nights to queens, like only three points, something like that. And it's placed in such a manner that you have the advantage till it hits 50.
If you cross 50, then the AI has an advantage, but basically like completely random pieces. Right. So like your entire sort of study and everything goes out the window, although it is the same board and stuff. But like the game itself, the actual chess is so beautiful that obviously, I mean, it's enjoyed so much time and tribulations and Netflix and whatnot, right?
And we're still talking about chess. Yeah. So it's very, once you get it, once you get hooked onto it, it, you know, you most just players will not play any other game. They just, they just instantly might dad actually told me when I was really small that you shouldn't play chess, don't play chess.
He basically banned us from playing chess because his contention was that, you know, he got really addicted to it. And like, even when he was like resting away from the game, his mind would be full of, you know, that when this move and what you could do and stuff like that. I can relate. I can totally relate to that.
You know, Sheila keeps complaining that I keep playing chess on my phone all the time. I'm trying to, I'm sort of in rehab right now. So I'm not playing chess now. But yeah, for the longest time, I'm not just no car.
I for the longest time, I'm actually convinced Sheila that so I read somewhere that, you know, that Anand right, Vishwanathan Anand, when he was playing his one of his world championship matches, he would, you know, it's so intense. You know, they sit for hours and so intense. He would lose almost a kilo in weight. Yeah.
So we waited till before he would be, you know, that was the level of exertion. You would lose that much by way of course, spiritual, something like that. And I read somewhere that you burn 400 calories. So I convinced her that I don't need to work.
So the longest time I got away. And then somebody said, I mean, they're all nonsense. You have to be Vishwanathan Anand for to lose 400 calories. Not in the nation, I'm not going to lose 400 calories.
Yeah. I think you're doing fine. I mean, the brain exertion of calories remains pretty much constant, irrespective of what you do during this. It's the intensity of the competition that sort of acts to the character.
Intense brain activity increases the metabolic rate. So if you're really thinking very hard, your metabolic rate, your blood pressure, your heart rate, everything increases. Oh, okay. So that is it.
Yeah. But whether it really burns 400 calories, I don't know. I mean, I've, I swore on, you know, everything that it does when I was telling this to Sheila. But yeah, to my simplified audience, I will make no such claim.
Yeah. No, I had once asked Kresha Shok this question because there's a very famous ESPN article which talks about the grandmaster diet and how you lose weight while very much. And it basically said Magnus Kullsen will be burning pretty much the same ballpark as Federer overall. But it's very hard to lose weight fast anywhere, then simply eat less.
Brain caloric burn seems to be a reasonably constant 400 per day, regardless of what kind of problem. Oh, okay. So I would burn 400 calories, even if I was not precious. Yeah, even if you're just like doing simplified.
Good. I can honestly tell Sheila that I'm burning 400 calories. Yeah. So battery, but it's just really a spectator.
So I mean, in terms of like spectator, this is the beauty of it. Yeah. It wasn't right. So I used to go and watch, there's a place in Bombay called Zandhu, Kanti.
So Zandhu is a famous Zandhu bum of the song. So Zandhu bum, used to be manufactured by a company called Zandhu Pharmaceuticals, which was somewhere in Dada. And they had a Kanti in there, a cafeteria. And someone in the, among the powers that we was a chess fan, right?
So he made this place available for people to play. And like really serious guys who were masters and international master, they didn't have too many grand masters. But later we had one in Bombay named Praveen Thipse, we used to go there, hang out and watch these people play. So when the big guys were playing, a group of us would stand around and watch.
And most of it would go over our heads because the thing about chess is, if you're intention of playing and obvious, the guy who, you know, you have a tactic in mind, you want to capture this bishop, so you line up your rope, but he can see a piece of stone. So he just guards it with something else. So, you know, nothing happened. So you have to be really sort of, you know, very vague about your, you know, mask your true intentions, play moves and finally when you play the key move, everything comes together.
And the guy, you know, he hasn't seen it beforehand. So he has got that kind of thing. So we couldn't, we used to just hang around, but we couldn't understand a thing. Till the internet took over.
And initially it was blogs and websites and things of that, which would analyze games. So you could, you know, they would say that, okay, you're, you know, this guy played H3 and this was also played by, you know, in his game against Tokolov and that kind of thing. And some guys would also tell you that if you didn't play H3, then the bishop would come to B4 and whatever, G4 and do something else. And then you would, you would have that at a moment.
But even that required a lot of visualization. YouTube made it absolutely easy for people like me to understand because there you have, you know, the guy can actually move pieces around and show your sequence, what would have happened. And because of the explainers, the game comes alive. There are a lot of really good, in fact, I think I'll add a couple of YouTube channels in the show notes in the, in the description.
So people who like it can, so they explain, so the one I watch, one or two that I watch, they explain it really well. Yeah. And it's very engaging because you, you know, why what the guy's, like someone like Carlson plays, it's way different to understand what his moves look very right. And his opponent can understand most of them, which is why the opponents move also look extremely right now.
And then they'll study the, study the, yeah, they study. So this really increased the popularity of chess, number one. And number two, I think during the lockdown, the popularity really went up several fold because chess does take a little bit of time. Yeah.
And that's actually, when I started playing chess during the lockdown, for the first time I created like a chess dot comma content, not that I'm good at it, but at least like, I just, why does it just, it's engaging and it's kind of, you know, it's beautiful in its own way. Yeah. Cool. So before we get it, yeah, Yeah, that made chess suspected of sport, which is why those are like a kimbrian explosion in India and over the last decade and a half or two, it started because of Anand actually, and like Anand is actually, I know four or five years younger than I am.
And I remember we were all, you know, he was literally the only guy who anyone knew. You didn't know many of the others, but he inspired a lot of people to take up chess. And chess was a pretty low paying sport. Yeah.
Even now it doesn't like great, but at least a lot of people can think of being professional chess players. They can do that at the full time occupation. Back in the day, there was no chance you couldn't earn a living. I mean, Anand also, I think he just about scraped through for most of his initial career.
It's just that he was the only son that his parents were, you know, had what basically middle class and they were intelligent and they probably sponsored his airfare and all the playing used to happen in Europe. So it was a long time. It only when he became a junior world champion or something, Anand became that. And that's when I think the government took it a little seriously and they gave him some kind of support.
Yeah. Before that it was pretty much nothing. Yeah, but his feet is pretty incredible. Even like, basically he didn't have grow up with the internet.
He didn't have any natural, just one of those rare freaks. It was just like just brilliant. It was just incredible. And he was like 14, 15 years old and he was just killing it in the Indian chassis.
He was just defeating everyone and he was called a lightning kit because he just played really quickly. And otherwise it would take, you know, 15 minutes, 30 minutes for a move. And this guy would just trot out the man and he would just beat that. Yeah.
And then someone told him, I think someone senior in the chess playing fraternity, that you're wasting your time in India because you don't have quality, your quality of opposition. You should go abroad and play. So like, you know, you can play someone who's world class and then your game also improves. And he did that.
And then of course he's the achievements that I didn't really become a world champion several times over. Yeah. And then not let's take a quick break before we come back with the old beard in Chennai. You know that feeling when you finish a movie and you just need to talk about it, that desperate need to discuss why Kallhuna Ho hates different.
Enter IBM's brand new podcast, Sennify. It's Shrimi and Karan just yapping over Hindi cinema every Friday. rom-com's director of the debut's career-defining moments. Whatever the vibing with, they're breaking it down.
Join the podcast on IBM pop's YouTube or any audio streaming platform. Caution, you want to rewatch everything after listening to us. Come join us on Sennify. You're welcome back to Sennify.
We're talking about chess and the old ambient. Now, if you were in Chennai, you would probably call vision of the nanan. Thumbi, because he would have been younger to you. Thumbi incidentally also was the mascot for the chess Olympiad in Chennai.
It was a night if I'm not to see. Night with a loon-ghee. It's pretty nice. Oh, yeah.
This is probably a VHD, VHD and a shirt. Yeah. So now, tell us about the chess Olympiad. So we got the chance to host the Olympiad just before the break.
We were talking about Anand and the achievements and how popular he made it all over the country. But especially so in Thumbiad. Thumbiad really took to chess and about half the grandmasters in India are from Thumbiad today. But there are a lot of grandmasters.
There are some 75 in India from good 30 or 40 or not from Thumbiad. They're from all over the place. So, you know, the inspiration has definitely been far and wide. Yeah.
I think the latest is obviously the Ramesh Babu Pregnandanda. He's of course, I'm going to talk about these guys. There are four kids, five actually, who have been kicking as in on the world stage, like very seriously. We'll come to that in a while.
I'll just talk about the Olympia itself. So because of the very, you know, very thoughtlessly entering the world, Russia thoughtlessly entering the world, they had to change the thing. And we, our Federation guys reached out to, you know, reached out to the Fede people and said, we are willing to host it. So apparently what he, he just texted him, the Indian Secretary, texted the Fede secretary or president or whatever saying that, can we host something or entire, this guy texted back saying Olympia at question mark.
Yeah. And this guy, say, you know, he apparently said, okay, sure, let's do it. And very unusual for India, they managed to get a yes, because obviously he, you know, he has to have government. So he went to sports minister and then they said, okay, we are on board.
So he, and then they had to decide where to host it. They said it's law call, the secretary, the AICF secretary. And he's from Delhi. But he said, I don't want to have it in Delhi because in July, Delhi is likely to be really hot.
Yeah. Like crazy hot, now it's like, yeah. And so let's, let's host it in Chennai. And so he, more than me, famously is known for its temporary weather.
He's known frequently. So he lines up and meets the chief minister, Stalin. And Stalin, he says, like he says, yes, immediately. And literally by the end of the day, it's done.
Like he meets all the money and by afternoon, it's done. In a sense, they've committed funds, which is not a trivial matter, because you have to guarantee, they had to guarantee something like $10 million or something to the Fede. I mean, that they had to let them see one bench is basically. Yeah.
And they went around, they organized, they had a few months, not much, three, three months or four months, and they organized accommodation, playing venue, you know, like COVID protocols. And at that time, they didn't even know what the COVID situation was going to be like. So they had to have an entire, you know, COVID task force vaccination, RTPs, RTS, God, no, what else, quarantine facilities, everything, eventually some 1700 and odd players landed up and into rage and all it is something like 3000 people from 186 countries and notable. I was sure allowed to take part.
So Russia and the Ukraine wanted, I think, no, yeah, I think, yeah. Russia and the Ukraine didn't take part. China said it's not sending its team. So Chinese team didn't come.
Pakistan also decided not to come. But apart from that, and Rwanda for some reason, it's decided not to come. So I'm sure the AICF secretary sobbed into his pillow that night. But otherwise, everyone else, 186 of those countries came.
Including one country, which has been dissolved in 2010. That country also has been that there's a country called Netherlands Antilles. Antilles. Okay.
But the federation has not been dissolved, so they sent it to him. Something like that. I don't know what the exact story is, but yeah. Do you know the story of the Sri Lankan handball team that went to Germany?
It's also a movie. I think it's a Sinhala movie called Machan. Basically, they are a group of sad, slum residents who go to Germany for the handball tournament as the official Sri Lankan team. And basically, I think they lose a couple of matches really badly.
But then they all vanish. Basically, they don't go back to Sri Lanka. They want to live in Germany. And then they check back with the Sri Lankan team and they never sent a handball contingent.
So basically, yeah. Fun things. But yeah, Netherlands and Antilles also. Exactly.
Yeah. Then, yeah, it was a resulting success. And, you know, it's one rarely gives a fine occasion to give credit to any government. But yeah, this time I think they did a pretty good job.
I quoted themselves honorably. There's no, you know, it was unstimped at work. And everyone contributed. Indian.
And what's the format of an Olympic? So four players are team and you know, you have sort of a, you know, you keep going up. You know, it's like you play each other. And if the higher you go, the more points you score, you play higher and higher.
So you basically divide into two groups. Then you play with those groups. And then, proper in that group, play the groups of the other guys. And so it's basically, you know, the better you do, the stronger the opposition you face.
Kicking off the hill. Kicking off the hill. Yeah. Yeah.
But it's always one on one. There's no. Four and four. Four and four.
Yeah, one on one. Yeah. You can't like two guys. Yeah.
But, boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. No, no, no, no, no, no. Not this. Not this.
Just stand out thing when we play chess. What do you know? You might have worked with group groups. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. All that doesn't happen. Yeah.
But it was. Is it timed or is it? It is timed. It's time.
It's time. It's usually you have two hours or one and a half. I forget for the first 40 moves. Okay.
And yeah. So if you don't make those 40 moves in that time, you lose the game. Okay. Then you have another like one hour for the next 20 moves.
Okay. And then after that, you have another hour for the entire game. But you have an interview for every move that you make. So every time you make a move, you 30 seconds get added to your clock.
Oh, okay. But what is the average number of moves that it takes for a chess game to come? So typically at a master level, it'll be 40, 45 moves. Okay.
Of 50 moves. So it's expected to come to you. Yeah. There is a good standard deviation.
So sometimes games will end in 30, too. You know, even as low as so there are games as low as I'm talking about master. Otherwise, it's among amateurs for moves also. Yeah.
But sometimes it'll be as low as 10 or 12 moves 50 moves. 120 is caught on the nature. So it's under 20 moves. It generally makes the headlines because normally GMs will not lose.
Masters will not lose in that short time. Unless there's a blunder oversight. Sometimes, you know, just, you know, overall movement. And they will resign.
So you and I, if we were playing, we wouldn't resign till, I mean, there's no question of resigning. We'll just like, you know, just to wait or something. But it's still making a counter blunder, basically. Yeah, basically, just hang it and see what happens.
Yeah. But yeah, master draw. And for a draw, it still goes up to the same number of moves. Sorry.
That's not enough. So it's basically endless. But the longest games are usually 100 plus, 130, 140 moves, 150 moves are known. Okay.
There are some rules. So one is a threefold repetition. So if both of us repeat the same moves thrice, that's an automatic draw. There's a fifth move.
You will never other moves in between. No. It's a position. No, just three times the same moves.
So I, I would maybe like to say D five and you would be shut to say E five. And I would night back to what about C two and you would be shut back to whatever. And then, you know, we do the same thing and I get a move back. If that happens thrice, it is a draw by repetition.
Even if you made it by mistakes, sometimes a player doesn't intend to make that move. I mean, he doesn't want to make a draw, but he forgets and he just moves it. Sometimes they repeat moves a couple of times just to gain time. Yeah.
So you have to make your 40 moves. So you just, you know, there's a safe move. He moves and moves it back and then moves it again. But if he moves it a third time by mistake, your opponent can claim a draw.
The operator is called in and he can educate. Oh, okay. So that happens. And there is something called a 50 move rule.
A 50 move rule is if you move, if you have 50 moves without a pawn move or a capture, etc. So if, you know, I have a king and a bishop and a knight, which is yeah, mateable, but not easy. And you only have a king. I could go, I mean, till the cows come home chasing around without repeating.
Yeah. Yeah. But if I make 50 moves without a capture or without a pawn move, it's a draw. It's called a 50 move rule or you can have a draw by agreement.
So you can offer a draw. Yeah. So back in the day, grandmasters is doing that. So especially grandmasters from the same countries.
We are playing a international match. Okay. You got a half a point. So you don't want to spoil each other's course.
So you just play it and move the offer each other a draw and then go. Yeah. It's not like football where you lose a point for a draw. Yeah.
Yeah. No, you do. So you get one point. You get one point for a half.
Right. Half. Yeah. Yeah.
Half a point. Yeah. In football, a winner's three, but a draw is only one. Right.
So basically, if you like end up drawing one point is lost between the two. But in chess, it's basically half an half. So nothing's lost. Yeah.
So what happened to the Olympiad in Chennai? Yeah. So India had three entries. India, India, India, India, India.
Oh, okay. So like 12 people, you know. Yeah. So India, A was the trath plane.
So there's one. Anand was not playing. Anand was like the mentor coach kind of. Not a coach, actually.
Just a mentor. Yeah. I think he's because active chess, right? If to play chess actively, you really need to be in good shape, like both mentally and physically.
And it's pretty arduous. So these guys have to train. They have to memorize thousands and thousands of openings and lines. Yeah.
You know, really need to work hard on everything. Because openings is where people can spring surprises because they have studied that opening at home. And if you don't know the right response. Countering.
You end up with a disadvantage. You keep, you know, you probably lose the game or suffer a draw. Yeah. In the first couple of months.
You being a better player. Yeah. Yeah. So everyone has to work.
So I think Anand decided not to. He decided to hold for that. Yeah. So we had on the first in the first group.
We had one senior grandmaster named Pentala Hare Krishna, who was like India number two. We had one guy named Vith Gujrati, who was, hey, India number three. And we had a kid named Arjun Arigai. So Arjun Arigai is some 16, 7 years.
He is one of the brigade of those four or five boys. What we're taking the chess world by storm. Right. These guys have been beating everyone in the world.
I mean, just all the top guys. So he was board number three. And board number four, I think was a guy named SL Raira. He was also a grandmaster from India.
The India two group, the India second team, was these four young guys and one slightly older guy. So four guys were one guy named Di Gujkesh, who is now, he's been doing so well in the Olympia. He's ill-erating, put him now, like as of yesterday, I think in the top 20, he's number 19. Wow.
In the world. In the world. He's now currently number two, India. He's just behind Arjun.
He's that. Okay. He's that. On the second board was our Pragnamanda.
Another kid, 16 or I think 17 years old. He just celebrated his 17 birthday. Yeah. And he's also in one.
He beat Kals Acana. And he's known, all these guys are known to be indefatigable. So they'll not accept defeat till the end. So this.
And they're extremely tricky. Yeah. They're just extremely tricky. So they just, you know, every, so one of the things, just where it's a fatigue.
Right. So every move, you have to think as sharply or as intensely as good. Even when you're very, even when it's clear that you would win. Even then, because you don't know what this guy, what quickly this guy will come up with.
And they end up exhausting the opponent. And the opponent makes a mistake. And so it's part of, you know, it's very paganacious guys. And both number three is another really, you know, all these guys are almost the same strength now.
A kid named Nihal Sarim. Yeah. So Nihal Sarim is another kid. He's also beaten best of them.
And on the fourth board, there is another kid named Raunak Sadwani. Okay. And the fourth board alternated between Raunak Sadwani and J.M. name Bhaskar Adiban.
Adiban Bhaskar. So Adiban Bhaskar Adiban Bhaskar Adiban is 29. Okay. Yeah.
And so, you know, these other kids, they've sort of threatened to start calling him Uncle Kolkati. He's on 30. So there's a lot of chemistry in that team. There were a lot of fun.
They keep, so I saw a video of Pragana and the celebrating his birthday. He was turned 17. So everyone caught him and threw him into the pool and all that. Those kind of things.
Yeah. And so they really did well. Another, so Pragana and another sister named Arvishani, an older sister, a couple of years older than him. And she was the one who was first taught chess because her dad thought they were watching too much television.
So he said, no no. The movies are not good for you, go play chess, and they turned out to be, both of them- Yeah, exception of that. So yeah. She- India also had two or three, I think women's team.
They both did really well. So, yeah, our India's performance has been pretty good. We didn't win the gold, unfortunately. There was another team from Uzbekistan, which won the gold.
And I think Armenia won the silver and India B won the bronze and India, A, didn't win the medal. Oh, interesting. So it was that tough. These kids are really, really good.
So you can, uh, even as we speak, there's a tournament called FDX, a rap mate or something in Miami. And Pregnanananda has basically defeated someone called Alirayza Firuja. Alirayza Firuja was reputed to be the second strongest, Grandmaster after Carlson. He defeated Amishiri, who's another top 10 player.
He has defeated everyone actually. Now I think next round or something, he's going to face Magnus Carlson, so it'd be interesting to see what happened. Oh, okay. I did Carlson's doing something, no, he's not defending his next round.
Yeah, so he's very interesting. So like Carlson is street-side, right? He's incredibly good. He's just an unbeatable.
He's completely unbeatable. And he's like, he makes, he squeezes, wins out of even completely dead equal position. So he's got that. So he has like an extra dimension that he sees.
And I think at some point in 2019, he was the top of the table for Premier League fantasy football. And he celebrated that as a bigger win than chess because obviously, chess doesn't have any competition. But he takes a chess very seriously, he takes a hit, losing. But he does give the impression that he's not easily challenged by the level of opposition.
So he decided he took a very radical view that he won't contest the World Championship. It was too boring for him. So the World Championship is basically number one place, number two. So the World Champion plays the challenger, selected by a big selection process, like the tournaments and tournaments.
And then eight people are selected from all these tournaments. And then they play one tournament and the guy who wins that tournament gets to play the, it's a two-year cycle to become a World Championship challenger. And after all that was done, it was one by one guy named Jan Nepomichi and Jan Nepomichi said, I'm a Carlsen said, I don't know. He's already beaten Jan Nepomichi, the man's like, I'm a ball player.
So now it's between, and he's the guy after him, a Chinese guy named Ding Liren. So Ding Liren and Jan Nepomichi are going to play off for the World Championship. But nobody in the chess world is going to take that World Champion very seriously. Because Carlsen is there, he keeps playing tournament, he's going to keep beating all of these people.
And he's basically just going to make a big joke out of the World Championship. So anyway, that was me going on and on about chess and, allegedly the Olympiad, but a lot of it non-Olympiad as well. So yeah, no, but amazing. I hope I haven't been both.
We should play really bad chess one. No, we should play really bad chess one. We'll be very good at really bad chess. This, in fact, is the really bad podcast equivalent of podcast.
We go in all sorts of random directions. You can't pin us down into 64 squares, even if you want to. So yeah, thanks, Arin. It was fun.
Very, very interesting. So basically, India is a true that India will dominate chess for New York. I'm pretty sure it will. It's got the firepower.
It's got these nearly half a dozen, really strong players. World class, they can beat anyone. And a couple of them. We have more people coming.
Populations are not one of those factors here. So yeah, signing off now. So stay safe, stay moving, stay castle and stay safe. Bye.
Bye.