‘It’s about time… India needs another Vishy Anand’ Premium

World No. 8 Wesley So — a former Fischer Random World champion and Olympiad gold-winner — talks about his migratory chess journey, the challenges of the professional game and India’s teen sensations taking the sport by storm

Nobody in Lotis Key’s family played chess. But great chess players entered each of her and her sisters’ lives at some point in time. In the case of Lotis, chess remains very much a part of her life. She is the adoptive mother of Wesley So, the World No. 8. She is also his manager. She is much more though. She has also been an actor, novelist, horse-raiser and social worker.

So became a part of her family during one Christmas season. “My older sister once hosted Bobby Fischer [the former World champion who revolutionised chess] and the younger one dated Eugene Torre [Asia’s first Grandmaster] in college,” Lotis told The Hindu in Kolkata recently. “And I met Wesley at the house of one of my husband’s friends in Minnesota, where Wesley was staying at the time as he didn’t have money for a hotel; he was a student and was making some money by playing tournaments.”

Since So had no place to go to for Christmas, he asked Lotis’ daughter (on the family’s only mobile phone) whether he could visit. Eight months later, he began living with them full-time. He was not sure if he could be a professional chess player, but Lotis told him that she would support him financially for a year. In less than a year, he had entered the world’s top 10.

So, who was estranged from his family, had moved to the United States from the Philippines on a scholarship. “That was the best decision of my life and I was 17 or 18 at that time,” he says. “Chess was dying in the Philippines then. The prizes were getting lower, as were the allowances for the players from the government. The country had a lot more to worry about than running chess. Basketball, boxing and billiards are the most popular sports in the Philippines and there was no place for chess.”

But the game was once very popular in the Philippines. “Everyone knew how to play chess,” So says. “I think the year 2008 was the peak of Philippine chess. We had eight or nine Grandmasters. After that, the game tapered off. I was No. 100 back then, but I could not make a living from chess in the Philippines.”

But he didn’t have plans to switch his nationality. “I just went to college,” he says. “And I could understand why India’s Parimarjan Negi left chess for the sake of his academics. He is my age and he used to be a very strong player. I wasn’t surprised when he stopped playing. Not everyone can be a professional chess player. There are a lot of other good things to do. He is very bright. It is very difficult to be a professional chess player if you are not as good as Vishy Anand.”

Like Anand, So too was a prodigy. In 2007, he became a Grandmaster at 14, the youngest from the Philippines. The following year, he broke Magnus Carlsen’s record as the world’s youngest to touch 2600 Elo points.