From The President

Last month, your Society uploaded all videos from the landmark BCAS Reimagine conference to its YouTube channel. Since then, these exclusive videos have accumulated thousands of views in a short period.

In one such video, being a dialogue on ‘The Victorious’ with living-legend Viswanathan Anand, the grandmaster shares insights on his deep passion for leveraging his personal learnings and achievements towards creating a virtuous, self-propelled chess ecosystem in our country. The true impact of this endeavour revealed itself when young GukeshDommaraju, his prodigious pupil, was crowned the youngest world champion in the history of the game.

Often times we underestimate the power of a single person, the power of a single idea and the power of a single organisation. From just one grandmaster in 1987 (being ‘Vishy’ Anand himself) to more than 85 Indian grandmasters today, with 6 out of top-20 world players being Indians and 3 out of top-6 world junior rankings being Indians, it was so apt when chess legend Garry Kasparov commented: "Children of VishyAnand are on the loose”.

Anand’s initiative, being superbly supported by the local government in Tamil Nadu, schools in Chennai, local coaches, capital providers along with technology access, has ushered a new era in Indian chess; it being highly speculated that the 2026 world champ