Thipsay rates Alpine SG Pipers’ GCL triumph as his greatest moment

Pravin Thipsay became a Grandmaster (GM) at a time when getting the title was a distant dream for even the most talented of Indian chess players. He became India’s third GM in 1997, after Viswanathan Anand and Dibyendu Barua.

He doesn’t consider it the greatest moment of his life, though. That came in Mumbai, his hometown, a few days ago: he coached Alpine SG Pipers to victory in the third season of the Global Chess League (GCL).

“The GCL title means more to me than the GM title because that was an individual achievement and this was a team event, in which the world’s top players competed,” Thipsay told The Hindu. “It was great working with players of our team, like Fabiano Caruana, Hou Yifan, Anish Giri and R. Praggnanandhaa.”

He is also glad that he picked Nino Batsiashvili as the team’s second female player. “I picked her because she is a team player, as the Georgians always are,” he said. “And she was a heavy scorer for us. I am also happy that I got Leon Mendonca for our Prodigy board.”

Thipsay was glad that the GCL finally came to India after the first two seasons were held in Dubai and London, respectively. “It was nice to see so many people wanted our team to win,” he said. “And I was happy to see good crowds coming to watch the matches, especially for the weekends. Our foreign players like Fabiano and Hou were pleasantly surprised by the kind of response from the chess fans here. And I noticed the fans were not disturbing the players before the game, which I think was nice.”

His team had three men who would be playing at the Candidates tournament — Caruana, Praggnanandhaa and Giri. “Caruana and Praggnanandhaa should be among the favourites,” he said. “And Anish too should do well; his preparations, some of which we saw at the GCL, seem to be excellent”.