Singapore’s grandmasters believe hosting World Chess Championship will help the game grow here

SINGAPORE – Just before Singapore chess grandmaster Siddharth Jagadeesh spoke to the media at the Equarius Hotel on Dec 9, he was approached by a fan who asked for a photo with him.

Such instances, which happened only occasionally before, have become more common in the past two weeks, all thanks to Singapore’s hosting of the World Chess Championship from Nov 25.

The soft-spoken teen has fielded requests for photographs and autographs in his two visits to the competition venue at Resorts World Sentosa, and while he is still getting used to the attention, he saw this as an encouraging sign for the game here.

“It’s nice to see that people are recognising chess players in Singapore because I don’t think it was a thing a few years back,” said the 17-year-old after a question-and-answer session with Singapore’s other grandmasters – Tin Jingyao, Wong Meng Kong, Wu Shaobin and Kevin Goh. “I haven’t seen as much attention for chess in Singapore.”

Siddharth, who became Singapore’s youngest grandmaster in May, noted the growth of the game in recent years, with the staging of the world meet set to boost it by another few notches.

He said: “Every world championship advances chess in some way – some new ideas, so to be able to watch it in such depth is quite good for my chess.

“In general, it’s also good for the growth of chess in Singapore because I myself started by watching another world championship match in Chennai in 2013 so I’m sure a lot of kids will pick it up.”

The Republic’s first grandmaster, Wong agreed that the hosting of the world championship had been a boon to the chess scene, having witnessed the situation over several decades.

As one of the Singapore Chess Federation’s vice-presidents, he was involved in the discussion on whether to launch a bid for the world championship.

Wong said: “It was a no-brainer for us to come out and do this... We needed to put a few things together but we definitely have the organisational ability.”

In July, Singapore beat Indian cities New Delhi and Chennai to win the hosting rights. It is just the second time that the competition is taking place in South-east Asia, after Baguio in the Philippines staged it in 1978.

Wong, 61, had also contributed to the growth of the game after he became Singapore’s first grandmaster in 1999 while juggling his full-time job as a psychiatrist.

The Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia associate professor for psychiatry, who picked up the game at the age of four, said: “A lot of times, the title is important to players because with that comes a lot of invitations to tournaments but I was a full-time psychiatrist... so that wasn’t too much of a consideration.

“But it was good for the kids to know that there was a grandmaster, for them to aspire to.”

With the world championship set to end on Dec 13, Wong noted the need to keep up the momentum.

He said: “This has been a great success and now the question is where do we go from here?”

Meanwhile, defending champion Ding Liren struck back to level the score at 6-6 after challenger Gukesh Dommaraju resigned on the 39th move in Game 12 of the world championship.

Game 13 of the best-of-14 match will be staged on Dec 11.