Exclusive | 'It’s going to be hard to compete with Indian chess': World No 3 Fabiano Caruana

Chess has witnessed a meteoric rise in India in recent years, the nation going from winning a bronze medal in the 'Open' as well as 'Women' sections at the 2022 Olympiad in Chennai to completing a golden sweep at the same event two years later in Budapest. And while it was the legendary Viswanathan Anand, India's first Grandmaster, who put the cricket-mad nation on the chess map, the trio of D Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi and R Praggnanandhaa are the ones who currently are leading the charge.

Speaking to Rupha Ramani on the latest episode of First Sports, world No 3 Fabiano Caruana not only described India is the new power centre of chess, he also expected the country to dominate the sport in the years to come with the young talent at their disposal.

"It’s not even much of an opinion, I think it’s objective. Looking at the results of the last Chess Olympiad, India was very strong there. I thought that the United States team would be kind of equal, (that) we would be fighting on equal terms, but India ended up playing much better," Caruana said on the sidelines of the third season of Global Chess League, where he was the 'Icon' player for Alpine SG Pipers.

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"Also India has the future. The current players are very strong and also very young. But you also have some even younger guys who will get very strong in the next few years. So it’s going to be hard to compete with Indian chess. It’s a good thing, I think. But also, I’m hoping that we can put up a fight in the next Olympiad," the American GM added.

Caruana compares Gukesh, Arjun and Pragg's playing styles

The 33-year-old also compared the playing styles of reigning world champion Gukesh, current Indian No 1 Arjun and world No 7 Praggnanandhaa – Caruana's teammate at Alpine SG Pipers in GCL 2025.

"They’re all very different players from one another. They’re equal in terms of their ability, their strengths and their results in some ways, although Gukesh has been the most successful of course because he won the Candidates and the World Championship. But they have very distinctive styles," Caruana continued.

"Praggnanandhaa has a very Classical style, very smooth you would say. If you can point to some weaknesses, sometimes he misses some tactics which I think makes people admire his play very much because it feels like a very clean style, and then he has these maybe small accidents.

"He’s (Gukesh) also Classical in how he approaches the game, but his main strength is his fighting ability, and it’s a tremendous strength for him. He’s a great fighter, he’s a great defender for that reason. So even in very difficult situations, he’s really tough to crack.

"And Arjun is, you could say the creative guy, the creative genius. He experiments a lot in the opening. He plays a bit of a scrappy style. In some ways I see similarities to my play and to his. So there’s a distinctive style difference betweem the three guys. And there are of course other really talented players like Nihal (Sarin) for example. But the limelight has been taken by these top three guys," he added.

Caruana was the highest-rated player in action in the third season of the Global Chess League, which took place in Mumbai this year and concluded on Tuesday. And besides Praggnanandhaa, Alpine SG Pipers also included Dutch GM Anish Giri and women's No 1 Hou Yifan.

After finishing second on the table, the Alpine SG Pipers would go on to defeat Triveni Continental Kings, the team that had won the previous two seasons, in the final by a 8.5-3.5 scoreline and win their maiden GCL title.

Watch the full episode below: