Indian helping hand in Ju Wenjun's women's world chess triumph

Pentala Harikrishna, hands behind his back, politely posing for the camera in a white Shanghai team jacket at the Women’s World Chess Championship venue during Game 2 earlier this month was a much grander reveal than it looked. At least for Indian chess followers. It was a surprise disclosure that the Indian Grandmaster was part of the newly crowned Chinese women's world champion Ju Wenjun’s team for the match.

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Harikrishna’s association with Ju, perhaps not widely known, goes back a long way. They were Shanghai teammates in the Chinese chess league for the first time in 2008, finishing as champions. The 37-year-old has turned out for the side a few more times since. It was Ni Hua, his former Shanghai teammate and Ju’s trainer for previous matches, who got in touch with him, asking if he’d be up to work as a second. Hua’s current role as head of the Chinese national team put him in an awkward spot in an all-Chinese title match between the defending champion and challenger Lei Tingjie.

“I have occasionally assisted a few players for tournaments,” says Harikrishna, ranked 32 in the world. “But a World Championship match is nothing like that.” The magnitude and nature of the match – preparing to face one opponent over 12 classical games – can be a lot more exacting for seconds. Harikrishna jumped right in and joined Ju’s team – alongside Chinese GM Wei Yi – sometime around April, less than four months before the match. They had remote sessions and met only days ahead of the match in Shanghai.

“It was a team of three introverts. Neither of us is expressive. Working together though was a lot more fun than it sounds,” he laughs. “I was perhaps the most talkative person in the group if you can imagine.”

Ju and Harikrishna have a common strength in endgame understanding. Defending a tricky endgame was what saw Ju through in the topsy-turvy final classical encounter, for her fourth World Championship win. “We weren’t sure which way it would go, so Wei and I began preparing for the tie-breaks during the final game.” Thankfully, Ju managed to deftly marshal her pieces, purging Black’s d-pawn and steering her d-pawn up the board for the team to celebrate over a hot pot dinner and call it a night.

After a gruelling couple of weeks, Harikrishna is back home in the quiet village of Vysoký Újezd, around 26 km from Prague. The soft-spoken, polite-to-a-fault GM from Andhra Pradesh, who learned chess from his maternal grandfather in Prathipadu, near Guntur, has a “love for trying new things”.

Lately, he has taken to playing beach volleyball and even joined a chess-boxing session on a lark, training with chess-boxing champion Marcel Valentin. “I’ve always liked boxing. I was curious to see how it combines with chess. I found it pretty interesting. People tend to associate boxing purely with physical strength but there’s a lot of strategy and presence of mind involved.”

Before the tide of teen Indian Super GMs arrived, Harikrishna snapped at Viswanathan Anand’s heels briefly. Gukesh D stands on the cusp of surpassing Anand as India’s No 1 GM, but Harikrishna was the first to do so in the live ratings, in March 2016. Anand’s fourth-round loss to Sergei Karjakin at the Candidates that year saw Harikrishna zoom ahead in the live ratings. He recalls feeling conflicted.

It didn’t make enough sense in the larger context of things, he says. “At the time, I can’t say I didn’t care for it (becoming India No.1) but my bigger hope was Anand faring well at the Candidates. It’s a big deal to be in the Candidates and try to qualify for the match. Me going ahead in the ratings then didn’t seem all that important.” Anand regained his position as the top Indian with a draw against Hikaru Nakamura in the following round, after being displaced for a day.

“I’m pretty certain Gukesh will overtake Anand. I think he’s a lot stronger than his ratings suggest.”

Ranked world No.9 seven years ago, Harikrishna touched a peak of 2770 Elo and has made his peace with not making it bigger or beyond. “For sure, I could have maybe done a few things differently. But I don’t want to look back and wonder about them. Today I’m still an active player but there are no rating goals. I just want to enjoy my chess and get better at it.” While he agrees that working extensively with engines in the role can lower one's “sense of danger” towards positions, he doesn’t believe the job itself is indicative of putting one’s career on the back burner.

“In this era, any analysis you do can be extrapolated to benefit your own game. I did pretty well in the French league and the Prague Masters while working with Ju. The experience has helped keep my chess in shape and for sure I want to do this again (be a second) if there are offers in the future.”

He has a bunch of tournaments ahead, including the Asian Games in September.

Harikrishna’s life today in a central Bohemian outpost inhabited by less than 2000 people revolves around his wife, former Serbian chess player Nadezda Stojanovic, and their two-year-old daughter Maya.

When he’s not playing chess, coaching, or goofing around with his toddler, Harikrishna could well be spiking in a sandpit, landing right-handed jabs in the ring, and surprising himself with his next move.

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