Mumbai's opulent Royal Opera House sets a glittering stage for the fast-paced Global Chess League. Yet, for Dutch Grandmaster Anish Giri, the real drama at this event unfolds away from the rapid-fire games. It happens in the quiet, charged conversations between three men who are currently teammates but will soon be direct rivals in the most crucial battle of their careers.
The Delicate Dance of Information Among Rivals
Giri finds himself in a unique situation at the GCL. He is part of the Alpine SG Pipers team alongside American superstar Fabiano Caruana and Indian prodigy R Praggnanandhaa. In a fascinating twist of fate, all three are also leading contenders for the Candidates tournament in March 2025, the winner of which earns a shot at the World Chess Championship.
"It's a very interesting dynamic," Giri admits. He describes their interactions not as simple collaboration but as a high-stakes psychological game, akin to poker. "We do exchange information, but every single word matters. You're kind of showing one card, knowing the other person knows that you're showing it."
For obsessive preparers like them, who live and breathe engine analysis, information is the ultimate currency. Sharing even a sliver of a thought can be revealing. This reality layers every discussion with subtext. "If I tell him something about a line, normally I'm revealing something," Giri explains. "But now he's thinking, why is he revealing this to me? And I'm thinking, why am I revealing this to him? It creates an extra dimension."
Carefully Incomplete Exchanges and Shared Pressure
Giri gave an example of the cautious exchanges with Caruana. He recalled a day when Caruana showed him a position from his preparation, but only from a very deep endgame. "He showed a position, but we couldn't know how it came there," Giri said with a smile. He later joked about the potential future irony: imagining facing Caruana months later and suddenly realizing he had reached that exact position.
Giri is quick to clarify that these are not attempts at deliberate deception. Instead, he values this rare opportunity to speak with peers who share his exact predicament. "My coaches understand chess, but they're not living the Candidates. Fabiano and Pragg are." This shared pressure makes restraint difficult. Conversations naturally drift towards preparation routines, the use of assistants, and tournament schedules.
"We'd love to share everything," Giri confesses. "But we can't. So it becomes this weird conversational dance: how much can I say, how much should I stop?" His relationship with the young Praggnanandhaa is even more profound, built from previous collaborations in the German Bundesliga. Their past discussions have gone straight to the core of chess improvement, creating a bond of mutual understanding rare among top rivals.
Giri's Robust Defense of World Champion Gukesh
Beyond the Candidates intrigue, Giri also addressed the growing scrutiny around India's new world champion, D Gukesh. He believes the criticism aimed at Gukesh for not being a dominant, undisputed world number one misses the point entirely.
"Once you gain the title, you're suddenly expected to carry it around saying, 'I guess I'm the best,'" Giri observes. "But Gukesh never claimed that." He stressed that Gukesh followed the perfect path: he qualified for the Candidates, won it, and then triumphed in the World Championship match against China's Ding Liren. "He did everything right," Giri emphasized.
Drawing on chess history, Giri pointed out that not every world champion has been a towering, unchallenged force like Garry Kasparov or Magnus Carlsen. Some eras produce a single dominant figure, while others see a champion emerge from a cluster of equally strong players. "That's okay," he stated. "After Magnus stepped away, there isn't one player much above the others. Someone has to win. It's not his (Gukesh's) fault that he won."
For Giri, the narrative questioning Gukesh's legitimacy is unfounded. The young Indian champion simply played by the established rules and won the ultimate prize, a feat Giri believes should be celebrated without unnecessary caveats.
