Mental Toughness in Chess: A Review of Interregnum

Jordan Himelfarb is a Canadian journalist who wrote a book called Interregnum about the 2024 chess world championship cycle.  He went to events and got a lot of time with and access to players, both formal (interviews) and informal (running into a player at a museum).  He traces the path of (spoiler!) how eight players qualify for the Candidates Tournament, Gukesh wins it, and then Gukesh defeats World Champion Ding Liren.

It's a good read, and the clear picture that emerges is of the psychological grind of competitive chess, especially at the highest level.  Both the focus and preparation required are intense before events — and only grow more demanding once competition begins.  In the Candidates, the players know they're within reach of a lifelong goal.  It's 14 games long, and each loss is brutal.

A fun Silver Knights angle on the book is how many guest lessons we've done with Grandmasters in the book, and how frequently the theme of dealing with losses arises:

• Anish Giri (world #6) narrowly missed qualifying for the Candidates in 2024 was the runner up in 2026, and qualified in 2016 and 2020.  He told our students "Losing is supposed to hurt. If you [don't] care about your losses, you won't be able to fight hard enough ... and you won't have the mindset to improve."
• Magnus Carlsen, who is in the rare position of having abdicated the world championship and yet remains world #1, told us it's okay to cry when you lose.
• Vincent Keymer gave a long answer about processing his emotions after his most disappointing game, where he drew and failed to qualify for the Candidates.
• Judit Polgar, the only woman to ever qualify for the open Candidates and the top female chess player ever, has answered a bunch of questions on the topic.
• Susan Polgar (Judit's older sister) joined us in the winter. 

The players at that level have astonishing memories.  Often when we have a top grandmaster as a guest coach, I'll show them a position from one of their games and ask them who they were playing, when, and what happened, and they always can do it.  This is simple enough when it's one of their best games, but Anish Giri also did it with a random relatively low stakes game from 12 years ago.  He has three children!  There's no way he's sleeping that well.

Here's Vidit, one of the candidates, looking at and identifying some games from his hero, former World Champion Vishy Anand:

In contrast with that memory for chess positions and opening variations, after a loss, grandmasters need what Himelfarb calls the "memory of a goldfish."  Supposedly goldfish have a seven second memory.

This is harder in chess than in most other competitive pursuits.  Once the whistle blows during a basketball game, the players are running, moving, and sweating.  In a game at the Candidates the players might be there and still for seven hours, and half of that time it's their opponent's turn.  It leaves a lot of room for recriminations and second guessing.

This puts a real premium on emotional stability.  Gukesh worked with sports psychologist Paddy Upton throughout the world championship cycle, and it helped him bounce back from his agonizing loss against Firouzja:

This is something we also think is valuable for students.  A couple times a year we bring in a sports psychologist like Doc Ali Arnold to work with kids to talk about mental toughness.

Family Help

Another persistent theme is that the players involved didn't get to the top level on their own, they needed a lot of help from their parents.  A few examples:

• Gukesh's father Rajinikanth is an ENT surgeon who paused his medical career to manage Gukesh's chess career and travel with him.
• Vidit's parents also put their medical practice on hold to help him, and his sister Vedika also sometimes took breaks from work to travel with him to tournaments (including the Candidates)
• Alireza Firouzja's father Hamidreza manages his chess career

This is an extreme version of what a lot of parents of scholastic chess players or parents of kids who do travel soccer, baseball, swimming (etc.) encounter.

Show Me the Chess!

My biggest complaint, one I have with virtually all media about chess aimed at general audiences, is that I want to see the actual chess!  Metaphor and description is fine, but true understanding involves seeing the thing directly.

When he writes "Caruana failed to find a simple tactic that would have ended the game, a two-move sequence he would have automatically played ninety-nine times out of one hundred, but which he overlooked when it mattered most.  Then Nepo found a square for his queen that would force a draw.  The color drained from Caruana's face."

Don't you want to see if you could find what Fabiano Caruana missed?  White to play!

It ties in nicely and thematically with the exhaustion that comes from the grueling 14 round Candidates, and the challenge a 4+ hour game.  For what it's worth I was able to solve it on my first try, and often with games played at this level I typically can't even tell who's winning without the engine evaluation unless the game is nearly over.

Another example: here's how Himelfarb describes the moment's leading up to Gukesh's loss to Alireza (the video above):

(Gukesh) kept pressing, throwing his pawns down the board while Firouzja's rook infiltrated his position and the white knight approached his king.

Here's what it looks like on the board, starting with black's 33rd move (commentary from GM Rafael Leitao for chess.com):