How India Became the Strongest Chess Country
Starting from the late 1920s, Russia dominated every aspect of chess. As long as something was related to the game, they would find some way to rule. Russia has had the most number of Grandmasters, with some of the all-time greats such as Karpov and Spassky, they absolutely annihilated the world championships, not even leaving space for other countries to even qualify, and when the Soviets entered high-level tournaments such as the olympiad or candidates, they swept the competition like dust.
The world championship winners, runner-ups, and host country- all under the Soviet flag.
The main reason for this country's amazing success is that they did not treat chess as an art or science, but rather as a competitive sport. It was a chance to flex on the Americans, saying that "hey, we are better at this one thing than you, so that makes us the greater country". And although that logic is not great, this still caused the Soviets to produce many top players.
But somewhere between the 1970s and now, Russia's chess dominance has slowly disintegrated. The undoubtedly best player alive does not even speak Russian! That leaves room for a new "best country" in chess, and in this blog, I will tell you how India took that crown. Click one of the blue links below to skip to any point in the blog, or if you want, just go right to the comments so you can tell me how breathtaking this article was-
The 1900s was the era that was home to some of the greatest games ever, played by some all-time greats such as Capablanca, Lasker, and Morphy. They all hailed from different flags, but none of them were from India. In fact, the first Grandmaster from India was in 1988. They literately invented chess countless years ago, and it wasn't until thousands of years later that they had a professional player at their own game.
The first grandmaster, the single genius who led a new generation to greatness, was this guy-
That is a photo of a young 18-year-old Viswanathan Anand, taken the same year he became an official FIDE Grandmaster. If you compare him to other top players, Vishy gained the title relatively late. That's because, in India, there were no top players, and no extremely good masters to teach him the game.
Instead, he learned the basic rules of chess when he was six years old from his mother. But Vishy's mom was not a master of any kind, and the best training he got was just playing in tournaments at his local chess club. They would often give the winners of their tournaments a free chess book, and Vishy would always win. His first sign of major success was in 1983 when he competed in National Sub-Junior Chess Championships- and scored an unbelievable 9/9. One year later, he got the IM title, and shortly after he won the world junior championship.
But he undoubtedly left his mark as a top player when he won the FIDE world championship, exactly 23 years ago.
This caused a massive boom in Indian chess interest, causing chess academies and clubs to form, schools started encouraging students to play chess, and hundreds of tournaments were being held all across India. Although Vishy did help a lot with the development of Indian chess, one good grandmaster does not justify a country suddenly making an army of little kid-chess demons.
A huge factor in their success that frankly does not get the recognition it deserves, is the amount of money that India puts into chess. And that brings us to our next point, the funding.
Money plays a big role in chess because tournaments do not fund themselves, coaches don't do work for free, and chess.com would never dare give out free memberships. But there are numerous companies such as Ramco, organic milk companies, Microsense Networks, and even the government of India who all give generous grants, training classes with super GMs, and just plain old money to help young kids develop talents.
And all that the companies ask in return is that the chess player will wear their logo at tournaments.
Pragg wearing the Ramco logo
This funding really helped the development and making of top Indian players, because when you have almost unlimited money dedicated to chess, your ratings will go crazy high. One example of this is the youngest grandmaster in history, Abhimanyu Mishra. He said in an interview that he spends twelve hours a day on personal chess improvement.
Abhimanyu did not spend all that time doing the three puzzles chess.com gave him daily, and he did not do it without the help of expensive coaches.
The funding and the sheer amount of incredible effort that these players do are the two main reasons why this country is so amazingly spectacular at chess. And in the next section of the blog, I will go over how strong their juniors became.
So as India showed us if you put together little kids, massive amounts of money, and massive amounts of chess, you will get a country that is overtaking the juniors chess FIDE rankings by storm. 
One-third of the players there are from India, and what's even crazier about this is that the second-highest-rated junior, is only 16 years old. Gukash D is in the ranks of players that are four, or five years older than him, and he can play better chess than them all.
It is obvious that they are swarming with young players, But one particular prodigy I would like to point out is Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, which is a totally normal-sized name for a human male. At 16 years old, he was the youngest player ever in human history to beat GM Magnus Carlsen in a stunning upset.
Magnus did not call him a cheater after the game, so that really shows his true strength on the board.
If a 16-year-old boy can beat Magnus with black pieces, imagine how insane he will be when he is a middle-aged man. In fact, according to the official FIDE rankings, almost every top Indian player is around 20 years old. So that means in ten years, this new generation of players will rule chess the same way Russia did 50 years ago.
Conclusion
In conclusion, many elements impact Indian chess, but the main reason why they are so strong is that they are just working hard and giving it their all.
India will always be a great chess country, and as the years go on and the new generation grows older, they will only become better and better.
Thank you for reading, and as a reward for you getting to the end of this blog, here is a meme I took off anarchy chess.
