Richard Rapport praises ‘safety net’ that has helped India’s chess stars rise meteorically | Chess News
Richard Rapport remembers being impressed when a newly-minted world champion Gukesh Dommaraju rattled off the names of the Avengers that he had assembled to help him dethrone Ding Liren at the world chess championship in 2024. At that world championship in December last year, the Hungarian grandmaster, who has made a name for himself as a man who can think out of the box and brings plenty of creativity in openings besides wild and unpredictable moves, was at the other side of the battlefield, having enlisted with Team Ding for both of the Chinese grandmaster’s world championship battles. “When I saw Team Gukesh, it was a very impressive team of people. To be able to afford and to be able to maintain such a setup, it’s just very impressive,” Rapport tells The Indian Express in an interview ahead of the third edition of the Global Chess League where he will represent the American Gambits franchise. For his first assault at the world champion’s crown, the then 18-year-old from Chennai had brought together a team of …
