Globe hopping Grandmaster
Chess Grandmaster Anish Kumar Giri, who narrowly missed qualifying as Challenger for a world title match, once referred to himself as “Dutch-russian-nepali”. It’s an accurate, if confusing, description. The tall, slim Dutch champion has a Russian mother and Nepali father. He also claims an India connection through his grandmother, who hailed from Varanasi. Given that background, he could call himself a world citizen, which is appropriate for someone playing a universally popular sport.
The World No 5 came within an ace of winning the right to challenge Magnus Carlsen, in the Candidates tournament at Yekaterinburg, Russia. At the halfway mark, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Maxime Vachier-lagrave shared the lead. But upon resumption, Giri surged into second spot, with three good wins, overtaking MVL. He was placed just behind Nepo until he suffered a heartbreaking loss to Alexander Grischuk in the penultimate, “unlucky 13” round.
Nepo had beaten Giri in the very first round over a year ago. Their second encounter was drawn. That first decisive result ensured the Russian GM would be the Challenger regardless of the last round results, since the tiebreaks favour the winner of individual encounters.
Nepomniachtchi (the name, which translates to “I don’t remember my name”, was adopted by a rebellious ancestor who went underground in Tsarist Russia) played well through the Candidates. But Giri produced great chess as well. Carlsen, who was commentating on the second half, said that in terms of quality, Giri played the best chess.
The last round was quite tragicomic. In the absence of tension, Nepo collapsed to a quick loss against Ding Liren. Giri had a mathematical chance of sharing first place (and prize money) if he won. But he also lost, to Kirill Alekseenko.
At 26, Giri is four years younger than Carlsen and Nepo, so this will not dampen his long-term ambitions. His whimsical sense of humour also helps him rise above setbacks and ride out trolling. In his first Candidates in 2016, he set a strange record. Despite playing positive aggressive chess, he ended with 14 straight draws. On April 1, Giri played along with a rumour: He was going to write a book on his 60 memorable draws — an inside reference to the late world champion Bobby Fischer’s magnum opus, Mysixtymemorablegames. He also punned, warning people not to “draw” conclusions from his performance.
Giri was born in St Petersburg (Russia) in 1994. His mother, Olga, is a civil engineer and father, Sanjay, an expert on water resources. His parents moved to Sapporo (Japan), and then to the Netherlands, where he currently lives in The Hague. To add to the polyglot flavour, Giri is married to Georgian Woman Grandmaster Sopiko Guramishvili. He’s fluent in Russian, Japanese, English and Dutch, and comfortably converses in Georgian and Nepali, too.
Confusing ancestry apart, he’s solidly anchored to family, focused on being a good dad to his young son and elder brother to his two younger sisters. His mother taught him chess and his talent was already apparent at age 6. At various times, he’s been listed as a player from Russia, Japan and the Netherlands (after 2008). He actually won the Russian sub-junior championship while living in Japan, and then became the youngest-ever Dutch Champion in 2009.
In 2010 and 2012, Giri helped former world champion Viswanathan Anand prepare for title matches. He’s also worked with Carlsen, (with whom he has a hilarious social media relationship) and another world champion, Vladimir Kramnik. Dutch GM Erwin l’ami is his regular second.
Like many chess players, Giri confesses to a special love for physics and mathematics. He plays a lot of table tennis (very aggressively) and football, is a prolific writer and a wonderfully insightful and funny commentator. Right now, he must be introspecting about what might have been. But his last public statement was about how the chairs at the Candidates “deserved our love” because they reminded him of green chocolate cake!