Suresh P Thomas: Welcome to the Fountain Ink interview. For this episode, we'll be talking with Sagar Shah, CEO and co-founder of ChessBase India, the biggest and most popular chess news portal in India. Sagar is an International Master with two grandmaster norms. He was very close to becoming a grandmaster before he quit his professional playing career, and became a chess entrepreneur and commentator. It turned out to be quite the masterstroke as he has now become the face of Indian chess broadcasting. Welcome to the show Mr Shah.

Sagar Shah: Ah, thank you.

Suresh: So let's start with the biggest event that just happened in the chess world, which was the World Championship game the match between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren. How do you see the change in dynamics in the chess world? Probably a lot of neutral fans will still think the value of the championship is diminished, because Magnus Carlsen just relinquished it and nobody beat him to dethrone him from his position. So how do you see it as a broadcaster and as a player and as a student of the game?

Sagar: Yeah, I think we are in a very interesting situation, where the strongest player in the world decided not to defend his title. But if that happens, you cannot really stop the cycle of World Championships, which has been going on for over a century now. And so what happened next was quite logical. 

Those who finished first and second in the candidates, they played against each other. And it was a very interesting world championship match. I think everyone agrees that Magnus Carlsen is stronger than Ding Liren, who has become the world champion, in terms of strength and his rating is a clear testament to that. But it will be very interesting to see how things pan out now because will Magnus Carlsen want to win back his World Championship title? Will he decide to do something different? Will there be some new events that he will start on his own, like how maybe Garry Kasparov did back in the 90s? That remains to be seen.

But the difference here is that Magnus willingly gave up his title. And he was he was fine with it. So I believe that while everyone would have wanted Magnus to defend his title, unfortunately, that did not happen. And I think Ding played really well in the World Championship match. It was a match filled with so many ups and downs, so much tension, drama. And in the end, he managed to thrive. So which was very, very exciting as a chess fan to watch.

Suresh: How do you see the difference between this particular Chess Championship match after the spectacular rise in popularity, just as an online game, compared to the matches of the last decade? How do you see the way that it was brought to the public to see, in the way it was discussed about? 

Sagar: I think, overall, what has happened in recent times is that chess has gained a lot of followers who are interested in the competitive aspect of chess, rather than just the aspects of the game, where you are looking at the nuances, the moves, the opening theory, the tactics, the variations, and so on. So what has happened is, people now tune into chess to watch the reactions of the players, or who's winning, who's not winning, and mainly, just look at it as more kind of a spectator sport.  And this, this didn't happen to chess earlier. 

You know, earlier, only people who understood the game quite deeply would follow it. And I think that's a very welcome change for the sport, because that brings in a lot of people to watch it. I know for a fact that a lot of people watch broadcasts now, from the perspective of what the bar is saying. If the bar is in white’s favor, they know that white is winning, if the bar is in black’s favor, that I'm talking about the engine evaluation.

And I think that's, that's very interesting, because now you, if you are a commentator, or if you are a broadcaster, you do not want to delve into the ultimate intricacies of each and every variation, you want to make it more exciting for a layman to watch. And I think that there is an interest in that sense. And so that has to be catered to. And I think a lot of the broadcasting thought which goes behind now, the commentary that happens online, happens from this point of view, rather than just thinking whether the best variations or the best moves are being discussed. 

Suresh: Sagar, on your own personal journey, you have a wonderful video on YouTube on why you gave up on becoming a grandmaster. You were a very strong player on the verge of becoming a grandmaster. And then you shifted your focus to something else. And you became probably the leading figure in Indian chess as far as broadcasting goes. So can you give us a brief background about this transitioning from a player to a broadcaster?

Sagar: I think it already feels like past life is a bit too much to say. But, already, another era when I was playing chess, especially because the pandemic came in, and so many things happened. But I had stopped playing competitive chess in 2017. And one of the reasons for doing that was that somehow my work related to just promotion, chess coverage, journalism, broadcasting, and all of that started to grow to such an extent. And it started to get so exciting, that even when I was playing tournaments, I would be trying to find time to, say, write articles or interview people, and think about how I could sort of promote the next big talents of India and so on. 

So it was very clear to me that I was a good chess player, but I was not the best. But when it came to coverage, when it came to writing, when it came to talking about chess, I think I was one of the best out there, especially because I enjoyed it so much. And also I had this innate feeling of sharing with people, whatever I felt, whether it be watching games, or whether it be, you know, be going to a place and covering a tournament as a journalist, so that that really took me on this path of becoming a chess entrepreneur. Or you can say, just broadcaster.

And it also stems from the fact that chess was never an easy thing for me, I had to work very hard to improve at it. I didn't have that innate talent within me, sort of, that improvement came easy, from let's say, a rating of 2000 to 2300. It took me maybe six, seven years, and then from 2300 to 2450. Again, it took me three, four years to reach there. Generally if you look at the current talents, they are able to do that within like two to three years, huge jumps. So while it was not ideal for my chess, what it did instil in me is this. This passion for the game, this study, the appreciation of how difficult it can be for someone, trying to understand it deeper, reading lots of books, sort of idolising the great players, trying to understand them deeper. And all of this, which I never thought would help me in anything apart from playing chess, actually became some of my strengths when it came down to teaching, commentating and so on. So, yeah, I mean, as they say, nothing ever goes wasted. I never knew why I was reading so many books, or why I was listening to so many chess videos and commentaries back when I was a player, but I think it all makes some sense now.

Suresh: As someone who has followed ChessBase for quite a number of years, what I find really interesting about the website is the way you keep a balance between chess at the grassroots level and chess at the really top level. So it is not exclusively focused on the top level chess, so what was the idea behind going in that direction.

Sagar: I think everyone works really hard in the chess world. If if you ever decide to organise a chess tournament, you would realise that there are so many little things that go into making it a success. And I have actually tried doing almost everything that is there in the chest world, right from playing, to commentating to organising to teaching, and everything that is there. And I know that how much effort goes into it.

And I feel like if today chess has to grow, then it has to grow by taking everyone together forward, you cannot just have the top players who are the only ones who earn out of it, or the top tournament organisers who make I mean, maybe not even money, but who get all the eyeballs. Basically, I think the people who work at the grassroots are extremely key.

Because today where Indian chess has reached is because of those people who did, let's say, district tournaments or state tournaments or national events, because of which we have talents like Gukesh or Arjun or Pragnnanandhaa or Nihal Sarin. You know, all of them, when they began, they played local tournaments, and it was only through that that they could actually reach where they are, and I feel like the finest talents are actually found in these places. And if you are not careful in looking over there, then you can actually miss out on some real, real gems, and I am a big believer of the fact that talents can sprout from just about anywhere. And if they are supported at the right time, then they can really bloom into something which no one can actually imagine that to be. And at ChessBase India, we take this role very seriously, that we can we can support these talents we can motivate them. And this free flow of information is actually a very, very important aspect of making sure that people are connected to each other in the in the chess world and talent can sprout that way or talent can actually flourish.

Suresh: So Sagar, you have seen chess at the grassroots level, from a very close distance. A lot of people don't understand this, how difficult it is for chess parents to raise their kids, because to be a really great player, you have to start young. It's almost impossible to start late and reach and and survive in that proper professional world of top chess. So these kids, the way their parents raise them, you have seen from very close quarters. What is your take on it, because you have been quite vocal about it yourself. The role played by the parents, the struggle, that a lot of people actually don't know how difficult it is to get a kid through a junior level.

Sagar: I think every person, every young talent’s journey is different. But I feel that parents’ involvement is one of the key aspects of a talent becoming into a successful chess player. It could be involvement in a very close way, where they actually travel to events and take care of every little aspect, become their managers, and so on. Or it could be just a detached interest, you know, whereby they are not, they're not micromanaging everything but they are interested in the, in their child's success, because at the end of the day, every parent is the first sponsor of the, of the young talent.

You know, you're not going to get a sponsor outside there and the parents would only spend money on something that they believe in. They cannot spend money today on, on frivolous things. So that's the reason why it's very important for parents to believe that there exists a future for their kid in this sport, and for all the parents who have actually believed that the journey has been from easy to some, I mean, I think easy might not be the right word, but smooth, to really, really difficult. And I think you can categorise different players in different difficulty of that journey. And I've seen parents who have, whose kids have become grandmasters, but are still reeling under loans. And, you know, because they wanted them to play in tournaments, have the best coaching. 

Chess looks like a sport, which is inexpensive, because you have a chess board and pieces to play, just, you know, you can go and play anywhere, you don't need a ground or you don't need any infrastructure. But once you start to get better, the main, main expenses arise in training, because chess training is extremely expensive. And in travel, when you have to go to tournaments, each travel outside India costs you anywhere between a couple of lakhs, one to two lakh rupees. And imagine that if a kid has to make three to four such trips in a year, that's already costing you 10 lakh rupees a year for your training plus playing, and that often is the income of a middle class family in a year.

So managing a super talented kid in chess is very, very difficult I feel, for, for people who don't have the finances. And that’s, that's a big challenge which we are trying to solve in our little way through the Help Chess Foundation, which which we created back in 2018. But, but I clearly understand that we are far away from solving this problem.

Suresh: Where do you see us as a chess force? Obviously, we are one of the top chess nations when it comes to Olympiads. We may not have won it, but we were very close and in terms of ratings we’re right at the top. But for a lot of the general public who doesn't follow chess that eagerly, the question that they always seem to ask is who after Anand will become a world champion?

Sagar: The current generation of Indian chess is way too young for us to feel that they have not yet performed. You know, they have been steadily improving. Right from let's say, if you, if you take Gukesh, who is world number 22 or 23 right now, and just 16 years old, or you take Arjun who is knocking on the doors of top 30 in the world, and he's 19, Nihal, Pragg, there is Leon, there is Raunak, there is Pranav. These are actually seven names, which I can already quote who are about 2600. And I mean, they hardly got opportunities of playing the top players in the world super tournaments. And so I think it's too early to talk about them becoming world champions.

I think firstly, they have to go through the grind of playing these super tournaments, playing against world class opponents, fighting that out, like, like Gukesh is doing, let's say he played Wijk aan Zee this year, then he played WR masters. Now he will play Norway chess. And I think this entire journey of these young talents becoming world class players is in itself very interesting and exciting for me to follow. And I think it will, it will happen for each one. Each one will take their time to mature into good players.

For example, if you look at Nihal Sarin, he was not playing for six months and six months in chess is quite a long period. But now he's back. He's playing at the Sharjah masters, he won his game today, he's on two and a half out of three, suddenly feels like a very, you know, fresh for come back. So each each of these talents has a personal life story.They have their chess, they have their things to take care of in their life. And I think it's going to be very exciting to follow each one of them as to how they're going to manage all of these things on the chessboard, off the chessboard. And who's going to be able to manage everything well, to become the best in the world.

Now, it can very much be possible that India may not create a world champion out of these, or it can happen that maybe not just one, but more than one would become the world champion. But for me that is not that exciting as it is to actually see how they how they solve each of their problems, which comes to them in their, in their life, as they keep growing towards that, that title that they are all pursuing. And that's why I personally am more interested in the process than the result. And I'm also very interested to increase the number of players who are going to reach the top, let's say 100, or go beyond 2600 plus rating, because then the chances of someone succeeding keeps growing higher and higher.

Because let's say if you have someone like Magnus Carlsen, it's not at all easy to sort of say that, okay, now someone's going to become a world champion, because that's only one player there. But if you have many, many talents, which are coming up, it can definitely help. And it's not just limited to boys or men. It's also girls, you can see that recently, Indian girls have been doing fantastically well.

We have Divya Deshmukh who's become an IM, we have Vantika Agarwal, who is doing very well, we have Savita Shree, who's a big talent, Akshita Ravi is coming up. We also have Vaishali, who is, who’s, I mean, I wouldn't even call her a young talent anymore, right. She's already a well matured chess player now, and is slowly becoming one of the best in the world. So I think from all directions, my, my work or you can say what, what I want to do for chess, is to give more and more talents the opportunity to reach this place where they can actually fight for, where they can actually, sort of things smoothen out for them to achieve their true potential.

That is what and I think, once Sreenath who is the coach of Arjun, used a very nice word, which I think has stuck with me, he says, he had used the word enabler. And I think, if I can enable certain things for for these youngsters, whatever that may be in different phases of their life. I think that would be what I see as my role.

Suresh: Sagar, before wrapping up, a couple more questions. One, the recent, massive endorsements that Arjun got, Nihal got, and Praggnananda got, in what ways has this sort of propelled the whole already accelerating growth, but this this was massive, especially for Arjun, after this endorsement? So this has brought a much more intense spotlight on the game message, how has the world changed from within… as in in the chess world itself? 

Sagar: In itself there's more belief in chess players that you can make a living out of chess and that keeps getting stronger. As days pass by Arjun's example is a great, great one for any young talent who is today going through the grind, where the parents are actually, you know, taking them to tournaments, trying to burn their savings. They, they know that this is possible, and I actually keep on telling people that in whichever sport or in which other domain can a teenager actually earn in crores? I am not aware of it, maybe, maybe there are maybe there are some, but I am, I am not very much aware. Of course, to do this, you need to be a very very special talent, which all of these youngsters are, but it is a possibility and this has been made possible. And all the companies are actually putting in their resources because they see some some logic behind these decisions. And I think I as the time goes by, I only see this trend growing.

Just like how when we talk about Vishy Anand and the World Championships and it comes to mind, you know, always donning the t-shirt with NIIT logo on it. I'm sure that many more companies would want that attached to their brand. And that is where the real, real value of sponsoring these talents lies, because you don't know where they are going to perform today. Well, you know, they might be at Sharjah tomorrow, they might be in South America, they might be in Europe. And if you are a company, who is, who is doing something interesting, and want the entire world to know about you, then these young talents are actually a great way of putting the word out there. So I think while earlier, many of the companies were sponsoring chess players, because of personal interest of maybe the founder, of the CEO, and so on in the game of chess, I feel slowly and steadily it is also becoming quite a wise business decision for them.

Suresh: Okay, one last question on the future of various formats. Much has been said about Rapid being the preferred or possibly the way to go in the future, given that chess has now very firmly established itself as an online spectator sport. It was not the case before, this is a very recent development in the world of chess. For the classical matters, obviously, the time that it takes between each moves, how broadcaster friendly, that is. Also the fact that the influence of engines, the, the way the engines have sort of made the game very theory heavy, do you see something like Fischer random format which deviates from the classical way of playing just taking over and becoming more popular? Or do you still see classical chess retaining a special niche place? Or will the Rapid eventually take over as the most important format? Probably not the most meaningful format, but definitely the most important format?

Sagar: Yeah, I still don’t, I'm still not clear on this. In my own mind, yet. I would, I would say that where there is money, where there is, and money flows from where there is viewership, and the viewership flows from where there is interesting broadcasts, and interesting broadcasts can only follow if that's an interesting format. And so, this becomes like an entire thing through which you can, you can be in there, yet at the same time, till we keep on saying that the World Championship, the classical world champion, championship is the most important thing, then that becomes like an entire cycle, like today the classical ratings are through what we gauge the strength of a player, we do not know where what is the Rapid or Blitz rating of these young talents, we are all the time following the classical reading.

There are qualification tournaments that we follow for classical events for the world from the Candidates and World Championships. So it's, it's actually very difficult for me right now to gauge but I think it's like that, right, you are, you are in the midst of things. And you are not really understanding that actually you are in the midst of a huge change that is happening. And perhaps it is inevitable, that shorter formats will take over, because the broadcast will be more interesting and there'll be more money that will come in like for example, say, the global chess league which is going to happen soon by Tech Mahindra, will be in Rapid format. And that, that comes from their their decision comes purely from the fact that the broadcast will be more interesting for rapid format, otherwise, they would have done it in classical chess.

So, so here's the, here's the conundrum. On one hand, you have broadcasts and sponsors who want to put in money where there are more eyeballs, and on the other hand FIDE wants to sort of keep their century-long World Championship tradition going by enhancing the World Championship cycle, which is in classical chess, Who's going to win this? I don't know. And I think I'm also very interested to see for me right now. It’s, it's like both, both things are in, are exciting. And I think the entire chess world is looking at it in this way, that we will keep our feet in both, both these territories, and then whichever one goes forward we will. That's how everyone's looking at it.

Suresh: Thank you so much Sagar, for giving us so much time and for having this wonderful conversation.

Sagar: Thank you, Suresh