As I write this, on the evening of 12 December, Dommaraju Gukesh has been crowned the new FIDE world chess champion – the youngest ever player to hold the title. 

At Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore Liren, playing with white in the final game of the 14-game classical tournament, seemed to be on course for a draw that would push the title fight into tiebreakers. Gukesh refused a queen exchange and various other blandishments, kept pushing – and the reigning world champion’s nerve failed, leading to a blunder in the 55th move that gave Gukesh the win.

The win makes Gukesh the second world champion to come out of Tamil Nadu after Vishwanathan Anand and, for me, that — Tamil Nadu's ascendancy as a chess powerhouse — is the larger story.

Deeply Rooted In History

Tamil Nadu's rise in chess is a teachable case study of how cultural heritage, institutional architecture, and strategic policy interventions can coalesce to create a microclimate for excellence in a sporting discipline while turning an ancient game into a modern success story.

Consider the sheer improbability of it all. A southern Indian state, competing against nations with decades of systematic chess development, has positioned itself as a global chess hub. The question isn't just 'how' — it's why here, why now, and what lessons this holds for sports development in India.

The king was so enamoured of his daughter's prowess at the game that he announced that only a man who could beat her at chess would be deemed worthy to win her hand in marriage. Shiva, so the story goes, disguised himself, arrived at the palace, defeated the princess at chess, and reclaimed his wife.

This mythological tale is enshrined in stone at the Sathuranga Vallabhanathar Temple in Thiruvarur, some 300 km from Chennai, where chess is deified and Shiva enshrined in the avatar of a chess grandmaster. The much-visited temple, dating back approximately 1500 years, serves as a cultural timestamp, marking the integration of the game into the region's spiritual and intellectual DNA. 

This story, and similar others — as for instance the story of how Ravana's wife Mandodari, seeking to find a less bloody outlet for her husband's thirst for battle, prayed to Ganesha for a solution and the god taught her chaturangam, the game of war, to beguile Ravana with — created a fertile cultural soil, which has been systematically cultivated to yield today's bumper crop of chess excellence. At the time of writing this, Tamil Nadu boasts 29 of the 83 grandmasters from India, with West Bengal and Maharashtra ranking second with 11 grandmasters each.

The Aaron effect

The first sowing of seeds of present success was in 1947 when the Madras Chess Club was founded. The club's evolution into the Tamil Nadu State Chess Association is an early example of the broader transformation of post-Independence Indian sport from amateur enthusiasm to professional rigour.

Where the story gets particularly interesting, and important lessons emerge for other sporting disciplines, is in the Soviet connection. The founding of the Tal Chess Club in 1972 by Manuel Aaron, who in 1961 became the first International Master from India, provided the foundation for the Madras school of chess — a place for the young to play, and access materials such as the Schachmatny Bulletin and Chess in USSR, sourced from the Soviet Union as it then was, translated, and made available for those looking to learn the game. 

This was a critical milestone in the development of the game in Tamil Nadu. Back in those pre-internet days, the Tal Club and the secondhand bookstores of the famed, and now sadly defunct, Moore Market were the only access points for advanced chess theory. But in the larger context, the Tal Chess Club offered something more valuable than mere technical knowledge — it was an early glimpse of what systemic excellence could look like.

The chess club he founded became the hub for training and tournament play and was hugely instrumental in nurturing the nascent talent of Vishwanathan Anand, among others. 

In his role as secretary of the Tamil Nadu Chess Association, Aaron was pivotal in organizing India's first-ever grandmaster-level tournament and the first woman grandmaster tournament. It was under him that district-level chess associations were established throughout the state, strengthening the infrastructure and creating a development ladder from the grassroots up. 

Once the chess pipeline dried up with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Aaron founded Chess Mate magazine as a go-to resource for youngsters wanting to learn theory and to practice with the games of the masters. Aaron's tireless advocacy was also responsible for integrating chess into the school curriculum -- but more on that in a bit.

Vishy As Force Multiplier 

Vishwanathan Anand was three years old when the Tal Chess Club was founded; by age six, Anand was a regular (In an Instagram post, the former world champion reminisced about playing against visiting Soviet grandmaster Vladimir Bagirov.) 

The Tal Club was the hothouse where Anand's talent was honed, and it became the springboard for his meteoric rise: national sub-junior champion at age 14, Asian Junior Champion at age 15 (the championship was held in Coimbatore in 1984, another Manuel Aaron initiative), youngest Indian international master at age 15, first Indian to win the World Junior Chess Championship (in 1987), first-ever Indian grandmaster at age 18 (at a tournament held in Coimbatore, in an initiative led by Aaron)...

Even before his storied world championship bout against Garry Kasparov, 'Vishy' had become an Indian sports icon, his deeds covered extensively in the media, his posters joining those of India's cricket stars on bedroom walls.

While individual champions often emerge as symbols of sporting success, Anand's impact transcended personal achievement. His real contribution lies in the fact that he became a force multiplier for Indian chess -- someone whose success rippled throughout the system, inspiring not only players but also their parents, educators, administrators and even advertisers and sponsors to invest in chess development.

His presence on the global chess stage directly influenced the rise of Subbaraman Vijayalakshmi, who in 2001 became India's first woman grandmaster, as also the likes of grandmasters Krishnan Sasikaran, RB Ramesh (who went on to coach the Indian team at the Chess Olympiad, B Adhiban, and SP Sethuraman, through to the modern young masters R Praggnanandhaa, Gukesh et al.

Government As Facilitator 

In the case of most Indian sports, governments at the state and central levels have been disinterested stakeholders, invested in institutionalized control but not in systematic sporting development.  In contrast, the state government has been far more proactive in the development of chess in Tamil Nadu, providing a teachable case study of how targeted state intervention can catalyze sporting excellence.

The groundwork was laid during the tenure of AIADMK leader and chief minister the late J Jayalalithaa, who first created the framework that shifted the state's chess policy from passive encouragement to active institutional support. 

The most consequential intervention came in 2011 when her government issued a landmark order integrating chess into the state's school curriculum. The move fundamentally altered the sport's accessibility, particularly among the young and relatively less privileged, and its social standing.

In 2013, when Chennai hosted the World Chess Championship bout between Anand and Magnus Carlsen, Jayalalithaa used the global spotlight to launch, and proselytize, the 'Seven to Seventeen program', wherein each state-run school would provide chess coaching to students in the 7 to 17 age group. 

The real innovation though wasn't the introduction of chess into schools, but the multi-layered approach underpinning it -- including the establishment of dedicated positions of chess coach in government schools (which, among other things, provided employment to mid-level players), the earmarking of government funds to provide chess equipment to state-run schools, and the creation of a fund to provide financial incentives for international achievement.

One such island was Chennai's Velammal Vidyalaya, whose robust chess education program has midwifed talents of the order of D Gukesh, R R. Praggnanandhaa and his sister Vaishali Rameshbabu and a dozen other players of international stature. Chennai Public School has emerged in recent years as another hothouse of young talent.

The incumbent government led by DMK chief MK Stalin built on the foundations laid by Jayalalithaa. Tamil Nadu's hosting of the 44th Chess Olympiad in 2022 was more than a sporting event — it hallmarked a strategic pivot in the state's approach to chess development.

The current administration's approach is characterised by increased budgetary allocation for chess development programs, enhanced support for rural chess initiatives, the establishment of chess academies in tier-two cities to break the sport out of the 'excellence archipelago' syndrome, and the integration of technology in chess training programs at the school level.

Most significantly, the incumbent government has introduced a talent identification program with a particular focus on rural and semi-urban areas, marking a crucial shift from the earlier urban-centric model and creating a pathway for talent to emerge from the less privileged centres.

These initiatives mark a clear progression from event-based support to systemic investment -- the early focus on tournaments and competitions, which was the USP of the Tal Chess Club and, since its demise, of the Tamil Nadu Chess Association, is now evolving into a more comprehensive development approach.

Both the Jayalalithaa and Stalin administrations demonstrated an understanding of the unique positioning of chess as a relatively low-cost, high-return sporting investment, and a recognition that the sport's minimal infrastructure requirement makes it an attractive option for broad-based development programs.

The effectiveness of such policy interventions can be measured through various metrics, such as the growing participation in school-level competitions, the rise in the number of international titled players emerging from the state, and the overall increase in registered chess players from approximately 40,000 in 2011 to over 100,000 in 2023 -- this last also a result of an ecosystem of over 60 chess academies statewide, including the Chess Gurukul run by Grandmaster RB Ramesh, where Praggnanandhaa and his sister Vaishali trained.

These numbers tell part of the story, but the real, and potentially long-term, impact lies in how these policies have transformed chess from an elite pursuit into a legitimate career option for young talents across social strata.

Systemic challenges persist. The distribution of resources still shows an urban bias, and the integration of chess into school curricula, however well-intentioned, faces challenges of implementation in resource-constrained educational institutions.

The Tamil Nadu chess story ultimately demonstrates how sustained, systematic state support can transform sporting potential into sustained excellence. There are other examples, from other states where existing cultural affinity merged with governmental policy to create talent hothouses -- Haryana with wrestling, Odisha with hockey, and to a lesser extent Kerala with athletics merit mention.

The key question isn't whether Tamil Nadu can maintain its position in the chess world — it's whether this model of sporting excellence can be replicated in other contexts. The state's chess story suggests that while excellence can emerge from unexpected places, sustaining it requires a complex interplay of cultural affinity, institutional support, and strategic government intervention hand in hand with private participation.

"This is the future for him (Magnus Carlsen). The Indians are coming for him. It's going to be one Indian, after another, after another, after another -- all disciples of Vishy!" 

In those words lies the story of the Indian surge in chess talent, powered to a large extent by Tamil Nadu’s systemic, systematic, investment in the game..

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