The Queen's Ambit: How Indian Women Can Break Down Chess Barriers

For all the visible and invisible barriers that impede women in chess, smoke is not one that comes readily to mind. Knowing the wide gulf that exists between the genders in the sport, imagine male players , just to discourage them from doing well. Cruel, isn't it? (More Sports News)

But that's the world we live in. The smoke, in a way, symbolizes the haze that pervades our understanding of the gender gap in chess. We can attribute multiple reasons to it, but there could still be many more (insidious ones) that fail to meet the eye.

The chasm is equally pronounced in India, with just three (Koneru Humpy, Harika Dronavalli and Vaishali Rameshbabu) out of 84 Grandmasters being women. Recent successes at Olympiads and elsewhere have not done much to bridge the gap. Perhaps, for the needle to move, work needs to be done pre-success. '64 Squares', a joint initiative of Hyderabad-based Pravaha Foundation and chess startup MGD1, is a step in that direction.

The initiative covers the training, tournament participation and exposure expenses of five Indian female chess players, including three-time Olympiad gold medallist Vantika Agrawal. The programme promises focused, sustained support and a fellowship grant worth INR 1 crore to the 2025 cohort, which also includes Woman FIDE Master (WFM) Shubhi Gupta, WFM Charvi Anilkumar and emerging talents WIM Sarayu Velpula and WIM Sahithi Varshini.

Explaining the ambit of help offered under the programme, MGD1 co-founder Manu Gurtu tells 바카라 in an interview: "It could be anything that a player needs. There are a lot of other things that a chess player would need, not just training and travel. Yes, those are the major expenses, but there could be others too. Maybe they need a laptop. Maybe they need something else."

The lack of government support, as per Manu, has exacerbated these needs. He elaborates, "There are a few girls who get supported, primarily in Tamil Nadu. But it's very less for their requirements. You can ask any of our top women and the support they have received. They do get some prize money from time to time for getting medals but a constant support is just non-existent.

"I would say it's the case even with the male players, but it's still a lot better compared to what it is for female players. That is how this whole idea came into being: that we are not doing enough for our women."

Pravaha Foundation director Vinoda Kailas digs deeper. "Chess is a very resource-intensive sport. It's expensive for everybody — boys and girls. But when finances come into play, it becomes that much bigger a hurdle for women. To get to the next level, you have to go and play in Europe, or you will have to play in a different country. So it's not just about money. It is also about safety.

"For instance, who do we send these girls with? One of the parents must accompany them because you need to have that trusted environment. Not having enough equally good opportunities for them within our country is another big barrier.

"These are things that we have experienced with our own players over the last two years, where we had to wonder why one player wasn't playing abroad and we understood that it was only because she didn't have the support to travel. So, these are all very real challenges when it comes to women's chess. With more people coming out to support them and governments conducting more tournaments in the country, we believe such opportunities will open up more women to play, and also do better," she adds.

The cultural differences overseas play a part too, Manu's co-founder Sreekar Channapragada reveals. "The general culture out there is cold, not just the environment. The food has become a big problem. Our dietary habits are very different as compared to what you get served in, let's say, Qatar, Uzbekistan or Europe. A lot of our chess players are vegetarians. Now vegetarian in India means different than what it means in Europe."

In such scenarios, they often need to rely on the largesse of Indian-origin residents. "For Norway Chess, Arjun (Erigaisi), (Dommaraju) Gukesh, Humpy and Vaishali are travelling. If I'm not mistaken, Vaishali is a vegetarian and I think even Humpy is. So all of them, even the journalists who are travelling, will get together and find a restaurant or find someone 'Indian' there. And that becomes the go-to place for all meals. You'll see them for breakfast, lunch, dinner out there," Sreekar says.

Some of the challenges are unique to chess, because the sport needs players to head overseas for tournaments much sooner than many others. Vinoda puts it into perspective: "In any other sport, you have to reach a certain level and that's when you start playing abroad. Whereas in chess, right from the get-go, if you're serious about it, two-three years into your journey, you will have to start travelling abroad.

"It's a different scenario altogether. If you go to any serious tournament, this is what the parents are always talking about. 'What are the next 10 tournaments and which countries? How are you managing travel? Did you get the visa?' If you're playing in Europe, you get a Schengen visa only for a certain period of time, and then you will have to renew it."

Manu chimes in with the mental aspect of it. "This being a mind sport changes a lot of things. In other sports, all the work that you put in to reach there is before the tournament, and then when you go to the tournament, you can just be at your best and hope that whatever effort you have put in prior comes into play. But in chess, when you're playing a tournament for 10 days, you get done with the game, then you go back to your room, you start preparing, and then you come back the next day, and you are again playing."

He adds: "So having a support system around you, which can take care of the rest of the things while you sit and prepare and focus on your game, is very important. This is also one of the primary reasons that you would see not just female players, you would see Magnus Carlsen's father travelling with him. He's there everywhere, right? It's not just about a safety issue, it is also about having a support system around you because when you are in a tournament, you're just in it. You don't have time to do anything else. You need other things to be taken care of for you."

But for all the impediments, Vinoda feels the only way forward is to do away with the women's section and have them compete in the Open section like the men. She says, "As an outsider, I feel that somehow women are conditioned on this women's chess path to begin with, because that's where the maximum rewards are. That's where they get compensated better.

"Say, if I'm an eight-year-old, I don't understand that there is a different format of chess for men and a different one for women. But right now, the way the path is designed, and perhaps not intentionally, is that if you want to represent the country or get rewarded, then you participate in a lot of women-specific tournaments.

"It just so happens in chess that when you play with a better opponent, your game is also improving. Men play in a different path altogether, competing at higher levels and elevating their game, whereas women are just playing within that contingent. And then at one point when they try to converge, I'm sure there is a lot of learning gap to begin with because you've worked in a certain cohort.

"As controversial as it sounds, it has to be one chess. The more we make chess non-gender specific, it will do that much better for women's chess."

Sreekar feels that for women champions to come out of India, the initial impetus needs to come from the parents. "They would have to believe that their child is good enough to not just be good at that sport in the women's section. We've realized that the biggest role is that of a parent, whether that is as a mentor, sponsor, manager, cook, or psychologist. It is all on the parent and the child, and how the parent moulds the child defines what the child is going to do for the rest of their lives."