Through the course of a 20-minute conversation, listening to GM Awonder Liang, it is impossible to sit with a straight face. At the hotel lobby, his laughter, while narrating his own career, is good enough to gain everyone’s attention. In the city for the third edition of the Chennai Grand Masters chess event, the American’s laidback style strikes a total difference to his peers.
With the World Cup round the corner, for some the tournament is to find some form, for some the target is improving the rating points. Arjun Erigaisi, who was Awonder’s opponent in the opening round, wants to find his groove before the big tournaments come calling that through the last couple of days, he has hardly sported a smile. The message from most is as common as it goes, “here to win.”
But Awonder is definitely cut off a different cloth. “I was surprised as well,” the 22-year-old says about his participation in the tournament. “I was beating up all the local guys. I had a big rating like 2690. And at some point my friends and I saw Arjun Eragaisi’s rating go to 27-odd from 2800. I saw that. I was like, how is that possible? We got to get him back to 2800. And so, I was like, let me come here. I’ll donate my four points, right? I have plenty of ratings to spare, you know. So, I was like, well, we got to get him back up. So, I thought it was a perfect tournament to get his motivation and self-confidence back. So, I thought, I’ve never been to India before. It looks like a beautiful country. So, it just seemed like everything was coming together again,” he says with a chuckle.
Before coming to Chennai, Awonder had been busy finishing his degree in mathematics and finance that chess was more or less restricted to a leisure activity. A world champion twice in his age category, off late, much of his time has been playing in low-rated events. “I was actually doing some financial work. That was taking up a lot of time. So, I wasn’t really playing or studying much chess. In my university, we had the chance to travel together for a tournament with friends. And we’d be like, ‘okay, let’s fly here together and just hang out with a group of friends and maybe get drunk. I would sometimes just play with friends, for just hanging out. I was pretty much out of chess for a long time. Sometimes, I basically wouldn’t play any big events. Mostly just some small tournaments against local players, you know, and just have fun. It could be a couple of thousand, sometimes a couple of hundred,” he says.
Witty, not intense
On Thursday, Awonder was pitted against the tournament top-seed Erigaisi. Playing with black pieces, he fought hard, stretching the Indian GM for a while before the top-seed sealed the game after 48 moves. The difference in the end, though, wasn’t on unexpected lines. “It’s been a while. I think probably in the last year, I haven’t actually played anyone within 100 rating points with me. So I mostly just play the local guys. I play the US Championship every year. But I think that is a much easier tournament. I mean, we’re from America, so we’re really lazy. So I was just going there and sleeping during the game. But yeah, we have some decent players in the United States as well. But yeah, they’re all really old, so we’re not too scared of those guys,” he says.
Even with regards to preparation, Awonder admits he isn’t as intense as others. While most professionals have a habit of following set routines and dedicating a major part of their time to preparations ahead of big tournaments, Awonder says he is too light on that front too. “I probably do like five minutes of work a day. I send an email to the guy or sometimes WhatsApp if I’m feeling really lazy. I’ll be like, ‘hey, what do I play today? That takes like five minutes of my time. And then he sends me files, files and more files. Sometimes I look at it, sometimes I don’t. That’s all the work I do. I think people study in very different ways. When I was coaching, I would just be like, ‘memorise these thousands and thousands of moves’. And then they’d be like, ‘no’. And then I’d be like, ‘well, how do you forget this when you play the game? What the heck? But then when I play the game, I just don’t do anything at all,” he chuckles.
All of this means his opponents across the table always seem to have a common question. “I think they look at my games and they are like, ‘why is he here?’ Who let him play in the tournament? Let’s see, I think it will be fun,” he says before admitting. “I think I should be more serious about it again since I play these kinds of events. But I don’t know. we’ll see, you know, I lose every game here. Maybe it’s time to start working seriously. But as long as it’s going well, you know, it’s good to.”
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As he gets up to leave, Awonder sums up the person he is. “I think generally I value my happiness. I think it’s good to be happy. it’s good to enjoy life a little bit.”
Results: Masters: V Pranav drew with Karthikeyan Murali, Vincent Keymer bt Nihal Sarin, Anish Giri drew with Ray Robson, Vidit Gujrathi drew with Jorden van Foreest, Erigaisi bt Liang.
Challengers: Diptayan Ghosh bt D Harika, M Pranesh bt Aryan Chopra, Leon Mendonca bt GB Harshavardhan, A Baskaran drew with A Puranik R Vaishali drew with P Iniyan.
