Chess and Indian Grandmasters: Firsts, Titles and Records

The correct answer is A, Chaturanga. Chaturanga was played in India in the Gupta age and its name means four limbs, standing for the four divisions of an ancient army: infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots. These four survive on the modern board as the pawn, the knight, the bishop and the rook. The game passed to Persia, where it was called Shatranj and where the phrase shah mat, meaning the king is helpless, gave English the word checkmate, and reached Europe through the Arabs. Option B is wrong because Pachisi is a race game played on a cross-shaped cloth with cowrie shells, the ancestor of Ludo. Option C is wrong because Gilli Danda is a village bat-and-stick game with no board. Option D is wrong because Chausar, the dice game of the Mahabharata story, is a relative of Pachisi and not of chess.

The correct answer is B, Viswanathan Anand. Anand, born in Mayiladuthurai and brought up in Chennai, earned the Grandmaster title in 1988 while still a teenager and became the first Indian to hold the highest lifetime title awarded by FIDE. His speed at the board earned him the nickname Lightning Kid. He went on to win the FIDE world title in 2000 and became undisputed world champion in 2007, holding the crown until 2013. Option A is wrong because Pentala Harikrishna took the title much later, in the following generation. Option C is wrong because Manuel Aaron was India's first International Master, in 1961, a lower title, and he never became a Grandmaster. Option D is wrong because Dibyendu Barua, though an early Indian talent who beat Viktor Korchnoi as a boy, became a Grandmaster after Anand.

The correct answer is A, Koneru Humpy. Humpy, from Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, earned the open Grandmaster title in 2002 while in her teens, and at that time she was the youngest woman in the world to have done so. She has also been a world champion in the rapid form of the game. The open Grandmaster title should not be confused with the separate Woman Grandmaster title, which several Indian players earned earlier. Option B is wrong because Dronavalli Harika, a three-time bronze medallist at the Women's World Championship, took the title after Humpy. Option C is wrong because Tania Sachdev holds the International Master and Woman Grandmaster titles. Option D is wrong because Vaishali Rameshbabu, the sister of R Praggnanandhaa, became a Grandmaster much later, in the present generation of Indian players.

The correct answer is C, 64. A chessboard is a square divided into eight rows, called ranks, and eight columns, called files, so the number of squares is 8 multiplied by 8, that is 64. They are coloured alternately light and dark, 32 of each, and the board is turned so that each player has a light square in the bottom right corner. Each side begins with 16 pieces, which fill the first two ranks, so 32 of the 64 squares are occupied at the start. Option A is wrong because 36 would be a six by six board. Option B is wrong because 49 would be seven by seven. Option D is wrong because 81 is the nine by nine grid of Sudoku, not of chess. Remember the pair of figures: 64 squares and 32 pieces.

The correct answer is B, 1924. FIDE, the Federation Internationale des Echecs, was founded in Paris in 1924, and its motto is Gens una sumus, a Latin phrase meaning we are one people. Because it was founded on 20 July, that date is observed every year as International Chess Day. FIDE awards the lifetime titles of Candidate Master, FIDE Master, International Master and Grandmaster, and it runs the world championship cycle and the Chess Olympiad. Option A is wrong because 1912 belongs to no landmark in chess administration. Option C is wrong because 1936 is a decade after the founding. Option D is wrong because 1951 is the year the All India Chess Federation, the national body, was formed, which is a different fact that examiners deliberately place among the options.

The correct answer is A, 20 July. The date marks the founding of FIDE, the international chess federation, in Paris on 20 July 1924, and the day is observed by chess federations across the world with tournaments and school events. Option B is wrong because 19 November is observed as World Toilet Day and has no link with chess. Option C is wrong because 29 August is National Sports Day in India, kept on the birth anniversary of the hockey player Dhyan Chand. Option D is wrong because 6 April is the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace, a United Nations observance covering sport in general rather than one game. The link to remember is simple: the founding day of the world body became the day of the sport.

The correct answer is C, Knight. The knight moves in the shape of the letter L, two squares along a rank or file and then one square at right angles, and it is the only piece that may pass over any piece standing in its way, its own or the opponent's. This is why a knight is so dangerous in a crowded position and why it can attack a queen without being blocked. Option A is wrong because a bishop slides along diagonals and stops at the first piece in its path, always staying on squares of one colour. Option B is wrong because a rook slides along ranks and files and is blocked in the same way. Option D is wrong because a queen combines the powers of rook and bishop but still cannot jump. Castling moves two pieces at once but is not a jump by an ordinary piece.

The correct answer is B, Gukesh Dommaraju. Gukesh, from Chennai, won the Candidates Tournament in 2024 and then beat the defending champion Ding Liren of China in the title match held at Singapore later the same year, taking the crown at the age of eighteen and becoming the youngest undisputed world champion in the history of the game. He was the second Indian to hold the classical world title, after Viswanathan Anand. Option A is wrong because R Praggnanandhaa, though he reached the final of the FIDE World Cup in 2023, has not won the world championship match. Option C is wrong because Arjun Erigaisi is among the strongest Indian players by rating but has not played a title match. Option D is wrong because Vidit Gujrathi is an Olympiad medallist rather than a world champion.

The correct answer is A, Viswanathan Anand. The award, instituted in 1991 and now named the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna, went in its very first year to the chess Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand, who had turned Grandmaster three years earlier and was then rising rapidly in world chess. He was later honoured with the Padma Shri, the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan. Option B is wrong because Kapil Dev, who led India to the cricket World Cup in 1983, received the Arjuna Award and the Padma Bhushan but not the first Khel Ratna. Option C is wrong because the athlete PT Usha, despite her Asian Games record, was honoured with the Arjuna Award and the Padma Shri. Option D is wrong because the tennis player Leander Paes received the Khel Ratna later in the decade.

The correct answer is B, Manuel Aaron. Manuel Aaron of Chennai earned the International Master title in 1961, the first Indian to hold any international chess title, and he dominated the national championship for close to two decades at a time when India had no professional circuit. His success is usually treated as the starting point of organised competitive chess in the country. Option A is wrong because Viswanathan Anand belongs to a much later generation and is remembered as India's first Grandmaster, in 1988, rather than its first International Master. Option C is wrong because Dibyendu Barua of Kolkata earned his titles in the nineteen eighties. Option D is wrong because Pravin Thipsay, another strong player of that decade, also came long after Aaron. Note the pairing that papers test: Aaron for International Master, Anand for Grandmaster.

The correct answer is A, Arpad Elo. Arpad Elo was a Hungarian-born American physics professor and a strong amateur player who designed a statistical method to compare players, and FIDE adopted it. Under the system a player gains rating points for defeating a higher-rated opponent and loses more points for losing to a lower-rated one, so the number tracks current strength rather than past titles. A rating of 2500 is one of the requirements for the Grandmaster title. Option B is wrong because Wilhelm Steinitz was the first official world champion, from 1886, not a rating theorist. Option C is wrong because Emanuel Lasker held the world title for twenty-seven years, the longest reign. Option D is wrong because Howard Staunton gave his name to the standard design of chess pieces used in tournaments.

The correct answer is A, Chennai. The 44th Chess Olympiad was played in 2022 at Mamallapuram near Chennai in Tamil Nadu, the first time India had hosted the team world championship of chess, and the Indian teams won bronze medals in the open section and in the women's section. Chennai is also the home city of Viswanathan Anand and of several of the young Grandmasters who followed him, which is why the venue was fitting. Option B is wrong because Kolkata, though a long-standing centre of Indian chess, did not host this event. Option C is wrong because Hyderabad has hosted other international tournaments but not the Olympiad. Option D is wrong because New Delhi was not the venue. Two years later, at Budapest in 2024, India won gold in both sections.