Bengaluru: Javokhir Sindarov sat in the players lounge yawning, stretching his limbs and occasionally looking up at the screen before him to check if his opponent had played a move yet. Back in the playing hall, Hikaru Nakamura, was a montage of emotions—frowning, shaking his head, furrowing his brows. At the end of 67 minutes and 44 seconds, the world No.2 pushed his h-pawn. It was an awful choice.
Nakamura went on to lose his Round 5 game and laid the blame squarely on his team of seconds. “This was 100 per cent on the people working for me,” he said.
Seconds, a largely invisible workforce, are players who spend hours scouring through engines, studying openings, analysing, developing ideas, and handling the grunt work of preparation for the player who hires them for tournaments.
Against 20-year-old Sindarov – the Uzbek player who’s in sole lead at the Candidates in Cyprus, a winless Nakamura employed the Marshall Gambit, hoping perhaps to have a complex position in which he’d be the one armed with better preparation. Turns out, it was Sindarov who had a clearer idea of the details. He castled short on move 12, catching the American off guard and forcing him to think for over an hour. “I had a file, it didn’t have the move 12…0-0…As soon as Javokhir played it, I was thinking to myself, ‘what is this’? It’s kind of insane. I think it’s impossible (to figure it out) without knowing what the correct line is,” Nakamura said.
Laying into their team publicly, like Nakamura did, isn’t how chess players generally deal with losses and lapses in preparation. “If he enters a very sharp position he has not analysed himself, it’s risky,” world No.1 Magnus Carlsen’s second Peter Heine Nielsen told HT. “This one was very hard to grasp without being fully into the details. I understand he was in a tough tournament situation and perhaps wanted to gamble. The decision could be justified. Naka (Hikaru) is open and cares about content. It’s interesting and I quite respect it. But I don’t think the chief blame lies with the seconds.”
Back in game eight of the 2004 World Championship match, Peter Leko demolished Vladimir Kramnik’s Marshall Gambit preparation, refuting a prepared queen sacrifice. Apparently, Kramnik did not speak to Peter Svidler, who was on his team and worked on the line, for the remainder of the match. Kramnik went on to win that match and became world champion. A former world No.4 and World Cup winner, Svidler was R Praggnanandhaa’s second/trainer during the 2024 Candidates.
Nielsen believes it’s important for players to ask questions about the preparation so that they’re thorough with the material. Training games with team members is one way in which players familiarise themselves with prepared lines. “Also, I guess having a conversation about the preparation gives an idea of the level of details the player is into… Typically, the player asks questions if he rechecks his preparation, which he should,” Nielsen, who was also Viswanathan Anand’s second during his reign as world champion, said.
Nakamura clarified that he wasn’t referring to Kriss Littlejohn, his known second, but another player on his team “who is ranked around top 20 in the world”. Players at this Candidates are accompanied by a known second or two, while the rest of their team members are tucked away, assisting remotely, their location and identities undisclosed. Praggnanandhaa has Vaibhav Suri by his side, while Fabiano Caruana has Cristian Chirila and Grigoriy Oparin with him at the Candidates venue, in Cyprus. Chirila teamed up with Caruana for a padel session on Monday, the tournament rest day. Round 8 will be played on Tuesday.
Sindarov’s team member and close buddy, 19-year-old Mukhiddin Madaminov, who is seen walking him to the tournament hall on game days, might very well double up as his Counter-strike (a video game the Uzbek Grandmaster claims he likes but is poor at) playing partner too.
With machines getting stronger and resources being accessible to all, the role of seconds has evolved. “I think it’s different today, but not tougher,” Nielsen said, “On the contrary, the 2008-2012 period was quite tough as engines were nowhere as strong as they are now. Back then we had sessions of basically no sleep, mapping out areas for the match. Nowadays, with powerful engines that’s not the case. Today, it’s more about implementing your choices well and ensuring the player is into the details.”
Afterall, it is the player who moves the pieces on the board and is trusted to make the best decisions for himself at the board. For all practical purposes, the buck should stop with them, Nielsen pointed out.
“There’s a reason we’re called ‘seconds’ – we’re not the ones with the primary responsibility.”
