Gajewski the second with multiple roles

SINGAPORE: “It was love at first sight.”

Outside the decked up Capitol Theatre, the venue for the media day and Opening Ceremony ahead of the chess World Championship match between D Gukesh and Ding Liren, Viswanathan Anand was all smiles. He had just cracked this one sentence response when he was asked why he recommended Grzegorz Gajewski to work exclusively with D Gukesh.
Gajewski, the Pole, is the one of the few direct links between Anand, India’s only world champion in the Classical format, and Gukesh, the teen who hopes to emulate Anand sometime over the next few weeks.

When the Pole was working with a lot of Indian minds at the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy (WACA), the five-time world champion and the Pole, who was part of Anand’s team at the World Championship at Sochi in 2014, exchanged a few words. “It wasn’t about convincing (Gajewski),” Anand said. “They tried and it worked.”

That’s one way of putting it. Over the last two years, since they came together just before the  2023 edition of Wijk aan Zee, this has slowly but surely become a successful association.

During the press conference, Gukesh, seated within handshaking distance of Liren, said Gajewski has had a big influence ‘on my chess and life’. “We started working together around 2022 December when we were preparing for Wijk aan Zee,” Gukesh said. “Had nice experiences together. I really enjoyed working with him. I was a very narrow minded chess player and he opened me. I improved a lot on my openings. Apart from my parents, he’s the most important person in my life right now.”

It wasn’t hyperbole; Gukesh, an introvert, isn’t known for hyperbole.