Published on: Aug 22, 2025 12:58 pm IST
Indian GM Srinath Narayanan passed his verdict on the younger generation of chess players.
India has turned into one of the superpowers in chess currently. It all began with D Gukesh’s World Championship victory in December last year. Meanwhile, even Koneru Humpy bagged her second World Rapid title in the same month, and then fast forward to 2025, she lost to Divya Deshmukh in the FIDE Women’s World Cup final. The result also saw Divya become a Grandmaster.
Speaking to News18, Indian GM Srinath Narayanan creditted the growth of techology for the chess’ rise in India. “I think that has mostly to do with the internet. And also, smartphones, internet, all these things are becoming much more accessible. And therefore, chess learning and everything is more accessible,” he said.
“We are playing more tournaments or learning chess, finding more people to learn chess with. And sometimes even learning without the help of another human being.
“All those things have become a lot more easier and more accessible now. And also, I think economically we are in a much better situation today than how we were twenty-odd years ago.”
Dropping his verdict on Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi and R Praggnanandhaa, he said, “It seems unclear right now who exactly will go on to dominate. We have a certain kind of a fab 4 kind of situation, I would say, amongst the next generation. There is Gukesh, there is Pragg, and there is of course Arjun. And Vincent is also rising very rapidly and there is also Alireza.”
“All these players, I think, are very close to each other right now. It’s very hard to see if one particular person will go on to dominate across formats like we had Magnus doing so or Garry before that.
“Or we could potentially see a situation where a bunch of players are extremely good with very little separating them. And each person being a little better at a certain format. So I think it’s likelier to go this way rather than have one clear leader or one clear player dominating across formats,” he further added.
