On a day when he achieved his greatest result on the chess board, Diptayan Ghosh looks back at the two years he lost during the prime of his career with a hint of regret. The year was 2021 when Ghosh emerged from the Delhi School of Economics with a degree and a job at a corporate bank in Mumbai.
But taking the job meant Ghosh’s chess career took a backseat. With COVID having reduced the number of tournaments to a trickle, and with no sponsors to back his ambitions, Ghosh decided to put his once-promising career on hold and become a corporate employee.
It was a gig that lasted two years before Ghosh quit his job to play chess again.
“I was just bored (working at the corporate role),” Ghosh said with a grin when he looked back at those years in Mumbai on the day he sent home two-time world championship contender Ian Nepomniachtchi in the second round of the FIDE World Cup, the biggest upset of the tournament so far.
After an hour of the loss, the disgruntled Russian was seen checking out from the official hotel.
India’s Diptayan Ghosh defeated Russia’s Ian Nepomniactchi. (PHOTO: Eteri Kublashvili/FIDE)
“I’d played in India before (in 2019 in Kolkata), so I had a good idea of what the conditions would be like,” he wrote on his Telegram channel. “But FIDE, to their credit, managed to surprise me. There’s nothing to say about the chess aspect. It’s one of those places you won’t regret leaving.”
Nepo did not specify what had irked him. There was no official complaint either.
Meanwhile, his conqueror was grappling with his own what-ifs.
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“I kind of regret not utilising those two years. I think I could have been a better player (if he had played those two years), but it’s what it is. I did not play any tournaments during that phase because when you work for a corporate company, you hardly get 15 or 20 days of leave a year. If I wanted to play, I could only do so in those 15-20 days. Otherwise, I was working full time,” Ghosh said.
Memorable upset
After a draw in the first game of the second round on Tuesday, the match entered an all-or-nothing second classical game on Wednesday before the duel would have had to be decided in tiebreaks on Thursday. Ghosh prevailed despite a deficit of over 150 ELO rating points and while playing with black pieces against a man who duelled Magnus Carlsen and Ding Liren in two successive world championship battles. The result against Ghosh on Wednesday means that the door on Nepomniachtchi qualifying for the FIDE Candidates tournament is now firmly shut.
“This is the biggest win of my career so far. Because it’s a (two-game) match, it’s not like one single game (at a tournament). I have played 2700-rated grandmasters earlier too, but defeating Nepo, a former world championship challenger, in a match is especially a big thing to me,” said the Indian grandmaster.
Unlike many of the younger Indian grandmasters who have sponsors and full-time seconds, 27-year-old Ghosh said he had no one to help with openings.
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In the engine evaluation of the game, Ghosh held an edge on the board from the 17th move when the Russian moved his knight to d2 (17. Nd2). A move later, the Indian was a pawn up.
Ghosh said when he offered up his queen for an exchange on the 25th move (which his opponent accepted immediately), he started to feel optimistic about his chances. Ghosh stayed a pawn up until the 46th move when Nepomniachtchi resigned.
