Introduction

Why shouldn’t we play chess?

It’s a question I sometimes think about. As an increasingly reluctant chess player, I have to concede that the game is interesting and challenging. It’s an inexpensive hobby if your approach is smart, and it’ll teach you patience, hard work and the self-control to not chuck a mouse across the room after a bad slip.

Of course, playing chess has downsides. It’s extremely difficult to make a living playing chess, so it's a huge time sink that can come without much tangible reward. Sadly, elo is not a recognized currency. Moreover, even after years of playing chess I shamelessly hang all my pieces in slow time controls!

I digress. The former issue has grown so bad that even some Grandmasters endure financial instability or balance intensive preparation with day jobs. For example, a startling amount of strong players work on railways, with the curse of employment delaying their chess training and derailing a promising career. In this blog, I’ll write about three remarkable masters who set about on alternate occupational tracks as railway workers.

#1 – Frederick Esling, Australia's First Champion
#2 – Laxman Rajaram, The Bullet Train
#3 – Kantholi Ratnakaran, Nezhmetdinov's Successor

Australia's First Champion

In 1871, a young Australian boy was sent to Germany to pursue education. Frederick Esling was just eleven years old at the time. As someone who also moved halfway across the world as a kid, it is a really difficult experience. I'm sure his life was turned upside-down... or maybe right way up, since he was from Australia!

Esling and I can take solace in chess: four years after moving, he got a chess set and book for his birthday. Esling learned the ropes at a local chess club and quickly grew in strength. Chess kids are scary!

At the age of nineteen, despite being sidetracked by the terrible influence of high-level chess, Esling received his civil engineering degree. However, before returning to Australia, he took the opportunity to face the legendary Adolf Anderssen in an offhand game. Upon introduction, Anderssen smiled, "I have met players from four continents. Herr Esling will be my first opponent from the fifth".

(Through the power of online chess, I've played opponents from six! Sadly, I'm yet to face an Antarctic polar bear...)

Using Anderssen's very own beloved Evans Gambit, Esling more than held his own in that game:

Astonishingly, after returning to his homeland, Esling did not brag about or even mention this extraordinary win. I know that if I beat one of the world's best, I'd go on and on about it like a nerd, and would probably embed the game in my Chess.com profile in no time. But forty whole years passed before a compatriot uncovered Esling's secret at last, while perusing old German chess books. Esling was incredibly humble in victory.

Anderssen... was a pleasant, amiable man... He generally finished his match-game early and, having disposed of his score-sheet, set up the pieces and was ready to play anybody, at any odds asked for.

-Frederick Esling (Australasian Chess Review, March 1942)

Esling worked as superintendent engineer for Victorian Railways. In that role, he carefully arranged train tracks like lines in an opening repertoire and designed train stations as solid as knight outposts. One of his major projects was the widening of the Flinders Street viaduct.

He also widened his list of accolades by participating in an Australian Championship Match in 1885. His opponent, George Gossip, never returned after losing just one game! Just like me, resigning after writing one word in my blog. In 1950, Esling was recognized as the first ever Australian Champion.

Having built Australian chess up, and built some tidbits of Australia itself, Esling died at the age of 95. Though his life was uprooted multiple times through relocation, chess anchored him through it all. His dedication kept him on the right track. I feel a bit connected to him in that regard, and I hope I'll have as much success in the winding railway of chess improvement.

The Bullet Train

These days, I suppose serious chess improvement must involve classical time controls and methodical thought. Aspiring masters experience extreme risk: they could fall asleep at any moment! But what if there's a faster way... literally? What if you could shamelessly spam online blitz to achieve 2400 FIDE and the IM title? For one Indian master, this strategy paid off: GM Laxman Rajaram. Known as the Blitz King, he used speed chess as a tool to break through a robust plateau and become the Railways' Pride.

Laxman was hailed as a prodigy from a young age. Like me, he was taught the rules of chess by his father as a little boy. Winning a local tournament at the age of ten skyrocketed his popularity at school. Conversely, where I live, your popularity and chess skill have an inverse correlation. Luckily, I suck at chess. Unlike me, Laxman excelled in chess and academics; he gave up the latter early on to focus on his exciting chess career. 

But despite his meteoric rise, even the fastest of bullet trains experience friction.

Between the years 2000 to 2002 my performance in chess stagnated badly to the extent that I began to regret my decision to pursue chess seriously.

-Laxman Rajaram

Though these few years were quite the trainwreck, Laxman took an unorthodox approach to improve. Setting his sights on the IM title, he began playing online games against IMs and GMs to instill self-confidence. If you could beat 2400s online, you could beat 2400s over the board, right? Most of these 2400s played exclusively blitz online, so Laxman adapted, grinding blitz on the ICC. Slowly, he begin to beat them, improving at both blitz and chess.

Since speed chess is often decided by wild time scrambles and flagging, it involves much more intuition than classical. Your speed chess skill is also affected by factors like mouse speed and premove intelligence, which are irrelevant in classical. Some say it's impossible to improve at slow chess by playing blitz! Luckily, Laxman didn't know it was impossible, so he did it. Within two years of playing online blitz daily, he reached 2400 FIDE and achieved the IM title. His dodgy training routine paid off! But the bullet train had one last stop: the GM title.

The below puzzle is taken a game during one of Laxman's GM norm tournaments. The tactic he spotted, probably in part due to his tireless blitz practice, helped him get his first GM norm!

In 2009, Laxman earned his third and final GM norm in the Kolkata Open. A win over 2500-rated GM Rahman, and impressive draws against GM Parmigian Negi, GM Le Quang Liem, and GM Nigel Short, helped cross his rating over the 2500 mark.

Getting GM was a monumental achievement to say the least, but Laxman is even more renowned for his insane blitz and rapid skills. He'll be remembered as one of the greatest speed chess players of his era. Frequent and high-level online play earned him the nickname Blitz King. In 2017, he was India's National Blitz Champion. That said, his highest feat was defeating none other than GM Hikaru Nakamura in rapid with black!

The lesson from all of this? You can improve by playing blitz! Blitz sharpens your intuition, improves your ability to think under pressure, and gives you a wider breadth of games to test our an opening repertoire. The next time someone questions you, tell them you're following the Railways' Pride!

Nezhmetdinov's Successor

Why does everyone have to be the 'new version' of someone else? Mbappé is the new Henry, Yamal is the new Messi, Bellingham is the new Zidane, and so on. Each promising talent must be assigned a comforting simile connected to an older, familiar player. IM Kantholi Ratnakaran, one of the most original players of our time, has been called the Indian Tal. I don't know why he has to be compared with Mikhail Tal... when a comparison with Rashid Nezhmetdinov would fit much better!

Ratnakaran made a late start into competitive chess. Unlike most masters of today, he wasn't double my skill level by the age of three. But he did quickly reach a high level (like Nezhmetdinov). At the ripe old age of nineteen, Ratnakaran's first FIDE rating was a handsome 2100. That's a level most serious players never reach!

Perhaps due to his unfortunate requirement for sustenance and railway employment, Ratnakaran is 'only' an International Master (like Nezhmetdinov). Ratnakaran frequents the Railway Team Championship events, representing the Southern Railway. These tournaments are far from kickabouts: they're FIDE-rated and filled with 2300+ opposition. Tough customers, but Ratnakaran is a player who can cause upsets on his day and uncorks moments of explosive brilliance, fearlessly sacrificing material for initiative or positional compensation (like Nezhmetdinov).

In 2019, we witnessed one of the most incredible of all these moments. Ratnakaran participated in the Goa GM International Tournament, hosted in the Indian seaside state of Goa, and our protagonist made a splash with a daring queen sacrifice that led his opponent into rough waters.

At first, the above game seems beautiful. Ambiguous queen sac leads to eventual victory in a high-level game, what's not to love? However, a closer look reveals more, as closer looks usually do. Ratnakaran completely plagiarized his move from Nezhmetdinov-Chernikov! The nerve of him to sacrifice his queen! Jokes aside, the two players and the two sacrifices played have a lot in common. Here's a throwback to the original Nezhmetdinov game from 1962:

Which one do you guys prefer? In my opinion, the fact that Ratnakaran's sacrifice gave dynamic compensation, rather than positional, made it much harder to evaluate. And Ratnakaran played it in eleven minutes! An incredible feat of intuition. I'd have to choose his over Nezhmetdinov's, even though the latter is engraved into chess history.

Hmmm, maybe Ratnakaran wasn't Nezmetdinov's successor, after all. Maybe Nezhmetdinov was 'just' Ratnakaran's predecessor! And maybe tomorrow's chess geniuses won't emerge from fancy academies, getting two GM norms before they can walk on two feet. Maybe they'll be humble railway workers, grinding weekend tournaments in which they boldly sacrifice queens. And maybe I'll write about them too in my blog, many years down the road (or, should I say, railway). Maybe...

The Problem

So... why do so many elite chess players have day jobs and financial struggles? Well, there are a number of challenges associated with being a chess professional.

• chess tournaments have low prize pools compared to high fees
• high-level improvement resources (coaches, courses) get expensive
• getting that good at chess is a huge time sink; opportunity cost
• very unstable income, if you hang a piece you could go hungry

Unlike sports contracts, chess players aren't employed by any team, so they need to traverse the tournament world solo. For this reason, GMs either find a day job and grind chess at night like Batman, or take up chess instruction and literature. Most GMs impart their wisdom to us mere mortals through coaching, books, and videos.

However, some do decide to trek through the issues of chess tournament income. One success story is that of GM Shyam Sundar, who spent years unemployed, earning a living through prize funds.

Today, he's doing very well: he's a full-time coach who works hard to provide affordable rates, and has published a book on the Arkangelsk Ruy Lopez through the move order 4...Nf6 5.O-O Bc5. The mainline goes 6.c3 b5 7.Bc2 d5!, and Black unleashes a freeing pawn break similar to GM Sundar's occupational breakthrough. 

Conclusion

By now, I've learned that many GMs are railroad workers, but that raises a question. Why railways? Most jobs would suffice to pay the bills. A boring answer would involve job security and the growing community of railway masters, but I think there's something else. Chess masters felt the railways calling... because chess improvement is like a railway!

Firstly, chess players lay the foundation, or rails, as beginners. They digest simple principles like central control, moving pawns two spaces, early castling, etc. Each station represents a coveted elo milestone, at which players linger and peaksit before reluctantly pushing on. Railways add connections and become more complex over time, like how serious tournament players make friends and network. Most importantly, as any wise train passenger will tell you, it's more about the journey than the destination!

As always, thanks for reading, see you in the next blog!