When D Gukesh pulled off a colossal ”upset” victory over Ding Liren in the historic World Chess Championship this month, it was perhaps best the Indian prodigy could manage to showcase his calm under pressure and sangfroid. It was later also revealed that Gukesh’s team for the World C’ship also included mental-conditioning coach Paddy Upton. Upton has notably worked with the Indian national team in the 2011 ODI World Cup winning year.
Gukesh has exhibited coolness yet again at the ongoing Weissenhaus Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, something that has been aided by a heart-rate monitor. Even though he was unable to win in the first leg of the Freestyle Grand Slam Tour, Gukesh has shown that he is ready to deliver — crumbling under pressure does not seem to affect him one bit — like Ms Dhoni for Indian cricket.
He had less than a minute remaining on his clock in the first game of his quarter-final loss to Fabiano Caruana, and a resting heart rate of 78 BPM. At the same time, Caruana was incredibly on the verge despite having 35 more seconds on his clock, and his heartbeat was 124 BPM.
Lesser than Magnus Carlsen’s heart-rate
Monitors that display players heart-rate in real-time during games are actually used at the ongoing Weissenhaus Freestyle Grand Slam. Even Caruana, meanwhile, noted Gukesh’s calm while at the board. He was probably in his 70s, I told David Howell, who asked, believe it or not.
“Magnus doesn’t even get his heart-rate up that high, too,” he continued: “It’s pretty cool stuff.
Gukesh’s heart-rate monitor numbers have left even official commentators like Peter Leko and Judit Polgar to wonder about his remarkably low degree of excitement. During their live commentary Leko asked Polgar: “How does he do it? Who is he!”
Upton also spoke about how Indian GM Gukesh cut himself off from the outside world after his win in Singapore last year. That’s one of the skills that a chess player has to have … Yes. As any athlete will tell you, it really comes down to staying in the right headspace, focusing on being present.
And especially in a game that is nearly all mental and last between 6-7 hours, being able to focus is incredibly important and very few can sustain complete focus at a high volume and in the zone for six hours straight. We call that in some sports, up and down and over.
‘You have periods where you know the next step; you know all the possibilities, you’ve done all the contemplating required and then your brain just needs a – not a rest but a little bit of evelopment. The only thing you do is closing your eyes and that is simply because you do not want to see anything else around you. And it’s kind of like a little recharge, little recharge, little top-up batteries and then,” he added.