Leon Luke Mendonca Interview | Olympiad performance shows the progress India has made

Grandmaster Leon Luke Mendonca discusses his chess journey, training, breakthrough title, and aspirations in a detailed interview.

Grandmaster Leon Luke Mendonca, who played in the Challengers’ section of the second edition of the Chennai Grandmasters classical chess tournament recently, spoke about the popularity of chess in Goa, his travels for training, how GM Vishnu Prasanna changed his playing approach, his breakthrough title triumph at the prestigious Tata Steel Challengers (Wijk aan Zee) in January and his major takeaway from it, the inspirational gold-winning performance of the India men’s team at the 2024 Olympiad, and his short-term goal. Excerpts:

So, chess is not too prominent in Goa. I think the first time we pretty much heard about chess was when this girl Ivana Furtado won double golds or something in the world youths (u-8 World Championship twice in a row). I’m not sure how many years back, but quite a long time back (2006 and 2007). That was the first time Goa pretty much heard of chess. But still, it was not a big thing. It still is not very big in Goa.

My journey was kind of a bit different. My family never had a chess background. We never knew anything about chess until my sister started playing. So, my elder sister first started playing. I think she received a chess set or something for her birthday. And she started playing casually. Then slowly, she became more interested in it. And my parents enrolled her with one local academy. A couple was teaching chess to kids. So, she started going to that academy. I also kind of understood the rules by then. And she would come back from the lessons and show me some things she learned from there. So, that was how I first started.

And I liked to play. Like, I would usually just sit and play a game for both sides. That’s how I started playing in the beginning. Then, my parents realised that I was interested. So, they also enrolled me with the same people. And slowly, I even started playing some local tournaments in Goa.

So then, I started playing tournaments in India (outside Goa) as well. Soon, I started playing some age category events outside India as well. And then, my first open tournament outside India was in 2016. It just continued and never stopped.

They never really did online training too much. At least, online wasn’t a real thing back then. So, it was mostly just in-person training. And also, we preferred it that way.

So, in the beginning, I was training with various coaches in Goa. The first time I went outside Goa for training was with Akash Thakur sir in Nagpur. He had like an extra guest room. So, he allowed us to stay there. He was a FIDE master and a very good trainer. He instilled in me some good training habits. He was one of the best trainers I’ve had in my early growth. He basically instilled in me a lot of good values and trained me very well.