India has potential World champions, but they will have strong competition: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave Premium

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, World Blitz Champion & former World No. 2, shares his journey to becoming one of 14 Grandmasters to reach the magical 2800 Elo points in chess & his thoughts on the current World Championship format.

As a feat, crossing 2800 Elo points in chess shares similarities with scoring 10,000 runs in Tests. Only 14 batters have scaled that peak. Only 14 Grandmasters have touched that magical mark. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is one of them. The Frenchman, usually referred to by his initials MVL, reached the milestone in 2016, during his triumph at the Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund. His peak rating, achieved the same year, is 2819 — the seventh-highest in history. A former World No. 2, he won the World blitz championship in 2021. Among his recent significant triumphs is the Tata Steel Chess India rapid title in Kolkata, making his first visit to the country truly memorable. Excerpts from an interview he granted The Hindu:

Winning the World blitz championship two years ago in Warsaw must have been one of the highlights of your career. How do you look back at the experience? It was impacted by Covid-19...

It has definitely been one of the highlights of my career. I hope there is more to come.

It was an extremely tough tournament. There were a lot of strong players, like Magnus [Carlsen], Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Levon Aronian... The circumstances were also tough because of the Covid, which hit on the final day.

Yes, Hikaru Nakamura tested positive and there was even the possibility of the tournament being stopped…

Yes. I managed to keep focused and was a bit lucky. The level of chess was very strong on the final day. I won the games I needed and it turned out to be enough.

You won the World junior championship in 2009. It is the most prestigious of the several age-group tournaments FIDE organises. Some World junior champions have gone on to become the ultimate World champions, like Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Viswanathan Anand...