As the sun sets on the Goan village of Arpora and another day at the FIDE World Cup ends, the road to Resort Rio, the venue where most of the players are also staying, gets busy. Not with vehicles, but Grandmasters. They set off in little groups, many wearing shorts and tracksuits that are a far cry from their usual attire of custom-fitted suits.
Where are they headed? Well, wherever their feet take them.
For a sport that demands hours of being seated at one place, walking has spawned its own folklore in chess. Some Grandmasters talk about five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand once ending up in another village while he went for a walk. It’s a fable that makes even Anand chuckle while dismissing it. He did add though that whenever he played the Tata Steel Chess event in the Dutch town of Wijk aan Zee, he always walked on the rest days to the neighbouring town of Beverwijk.
“Beverwijk is about 6 km from Wijk. An hour to get there, an hour back. Then, you also walk inside the town itself. There are many towns where I walk a lot, extremely long walks. Usually, I walk to relax,” Anand tells The Indian Express. “In any city that has a riverbank, I’d go for a walk along that, like in Paris. In many German cities and towns, I would take extremely long walks and just let my mind wander. Hopefully, you don’t get lost.”
Among the other top names here and the only player to win the World Cup twice, Levon Aronian, too, is known to take long walks.
“Three to four hours is normal for me. Especially after games. At tournaments, I usually walk with close friends like (Russian Grandmasters) Boris Gelfand and Vladimir Kramnik. We’d discuss everything: sociology, philosophy, music, arts. Or just chess. Just talking, understanding things and changing opinions. Some of my best memories are about discovering cities with my friends while walking. They don’t have any purpose, these walks. Just to see how the people in that city live. When you’re a chess player, you’re so focused on your work that you don’t get to observe things, observe humans in their natural lives,” says the 43-year-old Armenian Grandmaster.
One such long walk in Goa in 2002 during the World Junior Championship, Aronian says, changed his life. He spotted a temple and walked in. There, he met a stranger and, after a short conversation, decided to turn vegetarian, a decision he’s stood by since then.
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Vidit Gujrathi walks in the playing hall before his second classical game of round 2 against Faustino Oro at the FIDE World Cup in Resort Rio in Goa. (Express Photo by Amit Kamath)
However, when world champion D Gukesh plays in India these days, walks are rarer because he’s constantly approached for selfies and autographs. But his father Rajinikanth says he walks “plenty” when abroad for tournaments.
“I haven’t met a chess player who doesn’t like going for a walk,” says Tania Sachdev, the Grandmaster who’s transitioned into commentary. “It’s a healing way to get your mind off things. I loved to walk before games when I used to play. If I’m going out for lunch, I would pick a place that would require at least 20 minutes of walking. If there was a longer route to the playing venue from my hotel, I would take that. Walks have served every chess player in different ways.”
Brainwave moment
Sometimes walks are also about having a brainwave. Koneru Humpy says she reached the Women’s World Championship in 2011 because of an idea that popped up during one such walk.
“During the 2011 Doha Women’s Grand Prix, the day before the final round match against Zhu Chen, I went for a walk with my dad. There, we struck upon the idea of using the Snake Benoni (the Snake Variation of the Benoni Defence) in the game against Zhu. I found it interesting. So I used it in the must-win game which then saw me qualify for the World Championship,” says Humpy.
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American GM Wesley So says he walks for “about half-an-hour” before each game when the nerves are jangling. But local boy Leon Luke Mendonca prefers to walk after games to help drain the adrenaline. Whom you are with, Mendonca says, dictates how long they walk. “With friends, it can even be two hours. Alone, not more than an hour,” says the Goan.
American Liang Awonder is a rare Grandmaster who hates walking. But he understands the charm. “There is a kind of a history of academics who like to walk because they get ideas while doing so. Mathematicians, too. It’s said that a lot of famous philosophers also loved to walk,” he says.
