China-India clash looms in Spore - for title of world chess champion

Young Indian challenger takes on Chinese champion in a game famous for its association with geopolitical rivalry.

- Hsu Li Yang

The game of chess conjures an image of a silent mental duel between two opponents hunched over a 64-square battlefield with black and white armies. Both strain to pierce the veil of the future, calculating moves of attack and defense to advance their strategies while foiling those of their opponents.

Chess was recognized by the International Olympic Committee as a sport in 1999, and a high-stakes game can burn nearly 500 calories over four hours, increasing the players' heart rates by 80 beats/minute above their resting baseline during critical junctures. Not bad at all for a "sitting" sport!

Come Nov 25, the face-off for the highest title in chess will commence at Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore. Despite a history dating back to 1886, the upcoming World Chess Championship match will still feature several firsts:

It will be the first world open title match between two Asians - world champion Ding Liren from China and his challenger Gukesh Dommaraju from India.

At just 18 years old, Gukesh is the youngest ever challenger in history. Should he emerge victorious, he will break Garry Kasparov's record for being the youngest world chess champion at age 22, which has stood for 28 years.

And of course, this is the first World Chess Championship match to be held in Singapore.

COLD WAR PROXY FIGHT

Fittingly for a game that involves a metaphorical battlefield in which two armies maneuver to capture each other's king, the battle for the chess crown has often reflected global political tensions and functioned as a proxy fight.

The Soviet Union viewed chess dominance as being representative of the ideological superiority of its communist system and invested heavily in it from the 1920s, producing an almost unbroken series of world champions from 1948 until the USSR's dissolution in 1991.