When Sai Chockalingam, a class 8 student at SBOA School in Chennai’s Anna Nagar, wanted to watch the Chess Olympiad, his father, who is employed with a private company, readily spent ₹3,300 on buying the tickets. They waited patiently in the queue to get into the hall, where the top players were battling it out on the final day, at Four Points by Sheraton in Mamallapuram on Tuesday afternoon.
Spending a substantial amount on watching a chess game – which one can follow live easily online – may surprise most people. However, the game changer is probably the fact that the event is taking place near Chennai. The southern metropolis is the home of Indian chess in many ways – not just home to one of the game’s greatest, Viswanathan Anand, the five-time World champion.
