Oslo: Alireza Firouzja, his right leg wrapped in a cast and being wheeled in and out of the venue, has won two games in two rounds — one against Magnus Carlsen — and opened up a three-and-a-half-point lead at the Norway Chess tournament. His coach, Ivan Cheparinov, jokes that the injury and confinement are probably helping him focus.
On Tuesday, Praggnanandhaa went from having a promising position against Firouzja to provoking a Queen exchange, finding himself in an uncomfortable endgame and losing.
In Round 1, Carlsen also went from a good position to a defeat against the Iranian-French grandmaster. In the women’s section, Divya Deshmukh is just a step behind Bibisara Assaubayeva in the standings, winning both her Armageddon games and lighting up the confessional booth with her candour.
On Tuesday, she defeated fellow Indian Koneru Humpy. Gukesh’s game went into an Armageddon for the second day in a row, this time against American GM Wesley So, who won the opening contest and the battle. Carlsen also won in the Armageddon against Vincent Keymer after missing a chance in the classical game.
“Guys like Magnus and Alireza are very different. They have a certain killer instinct. In critical moments, they are more clinical than others,” Cheparinov said.
It has been four years since the Bulgarian grandmaster began working with Firouzja, and a chess coach’s job can be a bit like a therapist untangling a patient’s mind. Cheparinov was on Veselin Topalov’s team when Topalov played Viswanathan Anand in the 2010 World Championship match in Sofia.
“Veselin and I were super close friends so we knew each other really well. I was very young then, around 18. Every player is different. It took me a while to understand Alireza.” For the recent Women’s Candidates, Cheparinov served as Chinese Grandmaster Zhu Jhiner’s second, a stark departure from the other players he has worked with,
He ventured that Firouzja perhaps doesn’t really have a burning ambition to become a world champion. “I think he’s not as desperate as the others. So that might be an issue.”
Firouzja broke Carlsen’s record as the youngest player to reach the 2800 Elo mark by five months and was once seen by the five-time world champion as his likeliest challenger for the title. It never happened.
He played two Candidates tournaments but didn’t have a great performance in either. He doesn’t play a whole lot of tournaments in general these days, and even fewer classical tournaments. For someone as freakishly talented as the 22-year-old, he doesn’t seem to have the results that sufficiently speak of his gift.
“He’s one of the most talented players I’ve ever seen. The moves just come to him. When you’re under 20 seconds against him in rapid and blitz, it’s impossible to play him. It’s what happened in Carlsen game when they got into time trouble, Alireza was just frankly better,” said Cheparinov “I was with him in 2022, helping him, during his first Candidates. He was under pressure I think. He claims the Magnus remark didn’t affect him but I think, he may not have realised it, but it did.”
Cheparinov has witnessed the evolution of chess preparation, from a time when computer engines were weak and access to them uneven, to today’s landscape where tools and resources are abundant and accessible to almost everyone.
“Today, the mental work is more important than the chess part,” he said. “He is very strong mentally, and confident, maybe too much sometimes. I may not always agree with him but I have to be flexible and make him comfortable. He has to understand what works for him and so do I. He probably needs to play more. But he’s very relaxed so it’s difficult to push him or act like a boss. It just won’t work with him.”
“But the guy’s a fighter. He’s in a lot of pain, but he still wants to play.”
As Alireza Firouzja is wheeled out of the mixed zone after his post-game media duties on Tuesday, his eyes immediately scan the crowd of journalists and fans for his coach. Ivan Cheparinov quickly jogs over to join him.
