‘Carlsen likes to take ground, I don’t want to give any’: Giri on fiery rivalry

The playful war of words between them is nothing new. They have been taking shots at each other for years. Carlsen once mocked Giri for teaming up with Vladimir Kramnik for the 2018 Berlin Candidates. Giri hit back by calling Carlsen “more nervous than all eight Candidates put together.” That prompted Carlsen’s retort: “Win a tournament for the first time in your life, and maybe people will start taking you seriously.”

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This meant chess fans in Bengaluru were even more excited to see how these two carry themselves around each other. Giri seemed excited about the prospect of having Carlsen in the team, which makes Alpine APL Pipers strong candidates to defend their title. Whenever asked about sharing a team with Carlsen, Giri simply appreciated the fact.

Fake relationship

But Frenchman Alireza Firouzja was quick to call it a fake relationship. During the opening ceremony, he took a playful jibe at Giri and Carlsen, saying, “We don’t have fake relationships with each other… fake appreciations,” before bursting into laughter.

Giri (far left) seemed excited about the prospect of having Carlsen in the team, which makes Alpine APL Pipers strong candidates to defend their title. (GCL)

Giri has his reasons for the way he carries himself around Carlsen. It’s about standing your ground against someone who likes to take ground, he believes.

“I think he’s very competitive, and we have a bit of a personality clash. In the sense that I’m not a very aggressive person as such, but I don’t want to give any ground, and he likes to take ground. If you let him take the ground, he will welcome you to his circle of friends, but I always wanted to stand my ground. In some sense there was this clash,” Giri told The Indian Express.

Giri feels his relationship with Carlsen also has to do with the fact that for most of his life, the Norwegian was his main opponent. The constant need to beat the other also has a significant impact.

“But essentially, if you have two people that compete with each other regularly, even if they would be great friends, there would always be some massive tension underneath. It is very hard, especially in a game like chess. You’re trying to outsmart each other, outwit each other, look for each other’s weaknesses. It’s very hard to maintain genuine friendship and compete,” he said.

But unlike Carlsen, Giri is very good friends with the Indian Grandmasters. He has worked with Viswanathan Anand, and both Adhiban Baskaran and Vidit Gujrathi have been part of his team. He shares a particularly close bond with Vidit, both on and off the board.

“The good relations I have with Vidit are also largely because we don’t compete that much. We never played so many games against each other. Had we played more, probably our friendship would have suffered bigger tests. It’s just very difficult,” Giri said.

But keeping the playful banter and competitive ego aside, Giri has genuine respect for Carlsen, calling him one of the greatest players of all time.

“I feel, honestly, I have tremendous respect for him, for his chess. He’s undoubtedly either the greatest player of all time or one of the couple of great players of all time. My top chess career started with beating him in Wijk aan Zee, and since that moment, whenever I played professional chess, he was always World No. 1. So I’ve always seen him as sort of a main enemy in a sense, the main target. I tried to learn from him and learn how to deal with him. A lot of time I spent, of course, preparing against him, because he was basically my most dangerous opponent throughout my entire chess career,” Giri said.

Indian Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa recently said the will to win breeds a certain ego, in response to Hikaru Nakamura’s claim that every elite player is arrogant. While Pragg believes a competitive ego is natural among top chess players, it doesn’t necessarily make them arrogant.

To this, Giri offered his take: “He has a point. It’s very apparent that you are a very adamant and unpleasant person, or it is somewhat hidden. In order to play a game as competitive as chess and to constantly win, it is ingrained… the whole fighting mindset, trying to outsmart your opponent. It inevitably does something to your personality. People who are not into conflicts wouldn’t want to play a competitive game peacefully. Then you don’t become a chess player. You’re constantly battling other people and yourself. So every top player has some fighting instinct in him, and these personalities would always clash,” Giri said.

“Even with Vidit, we have a good friendship, but it’s not like we give each other roses every time. It’s a tough friendship where we both try to learn from each other, test each other, challenge each other. It works for now, but these things also change. I know some people who were great friends and turned into big enemies. So yeah, it’s not easy,” he said.