For Javokhir Sindarov, life is, above all, about playing; he considers himself a prodigy “at all kinds of board games.” His earliest memory, at age four, is the day he discovered chess in a kindergarten in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. At 20, he has just won the Candidates Tournament in Pegeia, Cyprus. This makes him the challenger for India’s 19-year-old Dommaraju Gukesh, no earlier than November. They are the youngest World Championship finalists in history. Both consider strategy secondary and haven’t studied the classics; where they shine is in calculation, like the computers that train them.
Sindarov receives EL PAÍS after being effusively congratulated by Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the president of Uzbekistan, where chess is one of the most popular sports; in November, when he became the youngest player to win the World Cup, the president ordered that he be given a three-room apartment, among other perks.
He slept soundly, as he does on the few days he’s home between tournaments: “I get up at 1 p.m. or 2 p.m., I dedicate time to my family during the day and to my friends from nightfall onwards. On those days, I only rest. But when I’m at training camps with my team, everything changes; we work between eight and 10 hours a day, including physical and psychological preparation, and we try to reserve three or four hours to watch movies or do other activities unrelated to chess.”
Chess is the thread running through his entire life — so much so that he struggles to recall any early childhood memory not tied to the 64 squares. However, he recounts in detail his earliest memory: “I was four and a half years old. A friend went to kindergarten, where they gave chess lessons; one day, I went with him. I liked it, and I asked my grandfather to teach me how to play. The next day, the kindergarten teacher was amazed when she saw that I not only knew how to move each piece but also how to put them in their starting positions. She asked to speak to my parents to tell them. My passion for chess was so great from that first day that, while the other children were taking naps, I, who hated sleeping, would play chess, and that made me the happiest person in the world.”
His grandfather was key: “A week after learning to play, I participated in my first tournament, where everyone beat me. At the closing ceremony, I sat in the front row, sad, watching them hand out the medals. My grandfather noticed, gave me small gifts, and said, ‘This is your prize.’ Six months later, I was the best player in my family. That’s how it all started.”
When asked if he thinks he is only gifted at chess, or if his intelligence would allow him to succeed in other areas, he replies: “I think I have a special talent for all games. And I always strive to win every game, no matter what. When I lose, I need to play another one immediately.”
“On the other hand,” he continues, “if I weren’t a chess player, I might have tried to be a diplomat or something like that, because I really enjoy talking to all sorts of people. I regret not having time to follow international politics closely because my life, traveling from tournament to tournament with my mind so focused on chess, barely allows me to, but I do try to keep up with international news.”
Psychologists and psychiatrists often argue that chess, as a form of mental combat, channels the innate aggression present in everyone to a greater or lesser degree. Listening to Sindarov describe himself, the idea makes sense. “I think I’m friendly, not boring, I enjoy the company of anyone, and I avoid fights at all costs. In fact, I didn’t like them as a child, even though almost all the kids at school were constantly fighting. I remember I only had one fight, I won it, and never again. It’s much better to get along with people.” He loves playing padel, and watching soccer and tennis.
Like Gukesh, the rival he’ll be thinking about night and day from now until the end of the year, and almost all the other chess stars born in the 21st century, Sindarov has not studied the classical masters. He has not read the My Great Predecessors series, where Garry Kasparov, the world champion from 1985 to 2005, meticulously analyzes the best games of the great champions since the 19th century. That book was considered the “Bible of chess,” at the very least essential reading, even for the Norwegian player Magnus Carlsen, the current undisputed number one at 35.
But not for geniuses in their twenties or younger: “It’s very rare that I read books. My coach insists on it, but I prefer that he teach me things at the board. For example, I’ve never looked up games of great champions of the past on my own, like [Cuban player José Raúl] Capablanca [who was champion a hundred years ago] or [Soviet player Mikhail] Botvinnik [champion in the mid-20th century], although I have seen some when my coach shows them to me.”
The logical deduction from that fact is that deep strategy, medium- or long-term thinking in a game, positional considerations… are now secondary, because computers have taught them to play in a different way. And Sindarov fully confirms this: “I agree that chess has changed a lot. I don’t want to explain my thought process in a game in detail, for obvious reasons. But I can summarize it like this: I’m always calculating, and when I have to make a decision without time to calculate everything I’d like, I rely on my intuition. Very concrete calculation is the basic element of modern chess.”
So is calculation what separates a star from a good player? “Today, anyone can be very good at openings [the first 10 or 15 moves of a game] because of training with very powerful computers. It’s not like before, when Kasparov stood out so much from the rest because he had the resources to have a team of very good coaches. Therefore, what makes the difference are other abilities, such as calculation, speed of reflexes, time management, technique, etc. It’s also important to plan what kind of positions you want to achieve against each specific opponent, or against whom you’re going to take more risks in pursuit of a win.”
A couple of years ago, Sindarov was just another rising star. Now he’s just won the Candidates Tournament with the highest score in the tournament’s recent history (10 points out of a possible 14, undefeated). What’s changed? “I’ve improved in everything: openings, middlegame, endgames, calculations, physical and psychological preparation. And, of course, the enormous support I receive from the government is very important. However, no matter how much help you get, and even if you have great talent, the most important thing is to work very hard. And that’s what I do almost every day.”
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