Fourth Board for the King

The first unpleasant surprise of the Samarkand Olympiad came even before it began. Looking at the line-up of the Indian team, I saw that the reigning World Champion Gukesh had been placed only on board 4. This article, therefore, is not yet an analysis of the Olympiad battles or an assessment of their results. It is an immediate reaction to a historically unusual decision and a reflection on what it means for the weight of the world champion's title when rating is given priority over the chess crown. Gukesh's position in the Indian line-up is not just a tactical detail. It is an unprecedented historical message about what we now consider the highest chess authority.

A decision beyond the line-up

India enters the Olympiad in Samarkand as the defending gold medallist. Yet its reigning World Champion Gukesh is not playing on board one! According to the announced order, ahead of him are Praggnanandhaa (2761), Erigaisi (2759) and Nihal Sarin (2718); Gukesh, with a rating of 2703, is only fourth, and Vidit Gujrathi (2697) is fifth. This is neither an emergency stand-in nor an administrative error. It is a conscious choice by the player, captain and team. The sporting logic of such a step can be understood. The order matches the September ratings, Gukesh is going through a tougher period, and the line-up may want to distribute strength so that the World Champion brings points on a lower board. There has also been speculation that board four reduces the likelihood of his direct Olympiad clash with challenger Javokhir Sindarov ahead of the upcoming title match. All these may be reasonable arguments for a single tournament. But the Olympiad board is not just a serial number in a table. The first board of a national team is also a place of responsibility, visibility, and symbolic primacy. And the world champion is not just one of five employees temporarily arranged according to the latest Elo list.. He is the holder of a title that has its own history, its own qualification path and its own way of passing on: the crown does not pass to the highest-rated player every month, but to the winner of the world championship match. That is why the Indian decision is historic. In the complete rosters of chess Olympiads, we do not find any reigning undisputed or classical world champion who played for his country on a lower board than the first before Gukesh. And this is not even about the second board: the world champion was moved straight to the fourth.

What exactly is historically documented

The claim must be defined honestly. In Olympiads, the precedence of Gukesh's case is clear. Checking available records of official senior national team competitions also did not reveal any earlier instance of a reigning classical World Champion playing for his country below board one. The absolute statement „never in any team competition“ cannot, however, be used without reservation: club leagues have fixed line-ups, different regulations, and their historical archives are incomplete. At Olympiads, reigning champions Alekhine, Euwe, Botvinnik, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Karpov, Kasparov, Kramnik, Carlsen and Ding Liren always played on board one. Other champions did not take part in the Olympiad during their reign at all – for example, Lasker, Capablanca, Fischer or Anand. Smyslov's short reign did not fit between two Olympiads, but at the 1957 European Team Championship he led the Soviet Union on board one. Absence was possible; a lower board for the reigning king was not.

The comparison shows that the first board was not in the past a mechanical reward for the highest Elo. This even applied to FIDE World Champions from the split title era, whose legitimacy was often questioned.

„If a World Champion himself accepts the fourth board, he tells the public that the Elo rating is a higher authority than the chess crown.“

Helsinki 1952: the closest case, but the opposite message

The closest historical parallel is Helsinki 1952. The Soviet Union was taking part in the Olympiad for the first time, and the reigning World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik was not included in the team. The traditional story claims that his teammates voted for Keres on board one, offered Botvinnik board two, and he refused. However, Douglas Griffin's more recent research in Soviet archives points out that there is no evidence for a formal vote or an actual offer of board two. Surviving records suggest rather that the management considered Botvinnik's form at the time insufficient and demanded from the first board player a practical guarantee of individual gold; Paul Keres was chosen, Mikhail Moiseyevich left out. The Soviet line-up then played in the order Keres 6½/12 (!), Smyslov 10½/13, Bronstein 8/10, Geller 10½/14; reserves Boleslavsky 7/8 and Kotov 2/3. The USSR won the event. Two years later, Botvinnik returned to board one and the Soviet Union won by a margin of seven points! Helsinki, then, is not a precedent for a World Champion on a lower board. It is a precedent for the decision that he would either play board one or not play at all. One may disagree with the harshness of the time, the political pressure, or the obsession with gold. But the symbolic hierarchy was absolutely clear: the title and board one belonged together so much that Compromise was out of the question. Samarkand sends exactly the opposite signal. This time the World Champion is playing – and voluntarily lines up behind three compatriots.

Buenos Aires 1978: the world champion was absent, not demoted

Karpov's absence in Buenos Aires 1978 also shows an important difference between skipping the Olympiad and dropping in the order. His dramatic title defence against Korchnoi in Baguio ended only on 17 October (local time sometimes given as 18 October); the Olympiad started on 25 October. Anatoly Yevgenyevich therefore naturally did not participate. The Soviet Union played without the world champion – not with the world champion on the second or fourth board – and for the first time in its Olympiad history did not win gold.

Viktor Korchnoi, whose match with Karpov ended just days before the Olympiad began, led Switzerland in Buenos Aires and scored 9/11. The Soviet silver episode was recalled in contemporary press as „Argentine silver – серебро аргентинской пробы“.

The history of chess Olympiads, their connection with the highest title and other curiosities are presented in a video by my favourite author from the Beautiful Chess channel:

Gukesh has already deserved the first board twice

What makes the decision even more remarkable is that Gukesh is not a debutant who happened to acquire the World Champion's status before proving his value to the team. At the Chennai Olympiad 2022, he led India's second team, scored 9 points out of 11, and won individual gold on board one with a rating performance of 2867 (all this at the age of sixteen!). In Budapest 2024, he again played on board one, this time scoring 9/10 (+8 =2) with an unbeatable performance rating of 3056. He won another individual gold and helped India to a historic team triumph. In December 2024, he beat Ding Liren 7½:6½, becoming the eighteenth and, at eighteen years old, the youngest undisputed World Champion. So it is not a player with unknown Olympiad performance who is being moved down to board four. A two-time gold medallist and the current holder of the highest title is stepping down. The result of the Samarkand Olympiad will not change this significance. If India wins, it will prove that the chosen tactic worked; it will not prove that the gesture had no symbolic value. If they do not win, it will not in itself be proof that the fourth board was a sporting mistake. The question that this decision opens is not a matter of a few half-points. It is a question of the hierarchy of chess values.

The strongest defence: the team is more than the individual

Supporters of the Indian order can offer an impressive moral interpretation: the young world champion set aside his ego, accepted the role needed for the team, and showed that no one has a right to the first board just by virtue of their title. Such an explanation is not ridiculous. Gukesh's willingness to serve the collective may be humanly sympathetic and the captain has a duty to field the team as he considers best. But this is precisely where two legitimate responsibilities clash. Gukesh is not only protecting his own prestige. As world champion, he temporarily manages an institution older than the rating system, the world federation, and the current Olympiad format. Personal modesty, therefore, can have impersonal consequences. The king may forgo comfort; he cannot pretend that the crown is merely his private accessory. Nor is it true that respect for the title necessarily denies sporting reality. In Turin 2006, Kramnik led Russia with a rating of 2729, even though Svidler had 2743 and Morozevich 2730. In Budapest 2024, Ding remained China's board one with 2736, although Wei Yi had 2762. Even more striking was Khalifman in 2000: as FIDE World Champion, he led Russia with 2658 ahead of Morozevich with 2734. These line-ups did not say that rating does not exist. They said that the title means something extra. Khalifman's club exception in the German Bundesliga does not contradict this conclusion. In the 1999/2000 season, he was listed in the fixed line-up of SG Porz as number three behind Christopher Lutz and Loek van Wely. However, league line-ups are set before the season, and this one was drawn up at a time when Khalifman had not yet unexpectedly won the FIDE title in Las Vegas. Moreover, this was not a national team, but a club with a pre-set order.

Verdict: rating gained a voice, the crown lost it

My conclusion is therefore critical. I consider Gukesh’s decision a mistake - not primarily because it necessarily weakens India, but because it weakens the significance of the office that Gukesh holds. The world title is not an honorary plaque attached to the rating list. It is an independent institution. Its meaning lies precisely in the fact that current form and interim Elo ranking do not decide every month who is the chess king. The crown is decided by the challenger cycle and the match. If we place the reigning World Champion on board four because he currently has the fourth highest rating in the team, we are accepting a different constitution for chess: the true ruler is the ranking and the title is just a ceremonial decoration. This is especially serious at a time when the top-rated player, Magnus Carlsen, has voluntarily left the title matches, and the public is increasingly asking whether the World Champion is also „the best player“. The institution of the title will survive this question only if we respect its own logic, not if we subordinate it to the Elo list at the first unfavourable rating constellation. Gukesh may or may not excel on board four in Samarkand. India may or may not retain the gold. Neither, however, will erase the image that has already entered history: the reigning World Champion sits behind three teammates because recent numbers were given priority over the crown. It is a historical exception – and in my view also another, this time a voluntary humiliation of world primacy.

Is the chess crown on the way to the scrapyard?

This year marks 140 years since the Steinitz–Zukertort match, from which we count the history of the official world championship. However, the chess crown did not gain its privileged position in a single day. It had to be gradually fought for before it became the most precious jewel of the chess world – a symbol standing above momentary form, rating, or individual tournament successes. That is precisely why the sight of the reigning World Champion on board four fills me with such dismay. As if we were being told that the crown no longer has any special weight and its bearer should be placed wherever the rating currently puts him. The title yields to the number, tradition to the table and the chess king to the order arranged according to Elo. The chess crown could then suffer a definitive symbolic humiliation at the very same Olympiad. In Samarkand, a new FIDE president will be elected and one of the candidates is Jan Henric Büttner – co-founder and main promoter of so-called Freestyle Chess. If he were to win the election, I would consider it the last drop. I fear a world in which the traditional World Championship will no longer be the untouchable centrepiece of the royal game, but merely one product among several others. From the most precious crown, the last valuable ornaments might gradually disappear until someone thinks that the old and impractical piece of history is actually a hindrance – and that it would be best to send it straight to the scrapyard. I hope this is only an overly dark premonition. However, the sight of the World Champion settled on the fourth board certainly does not reassure me.

The events at the Olympiad, the twists and turns, beautiful games and failures will soon come to the fore, while team line-ups will, in a few weeks, interest at most the historians. Fresh experiences will quite naturally redraw the map of public and expert interest! Well, and what would an article be without at least one example, eh?! In the first round, the World Champion demonstrated a perfect end to the game. His strategy for conducting the attack deserves to appear not only in videos, but later above all in books – in chapters on how to handle the pair of bishops. In the game Gukesh vs. Alriyami arose after the moves 28.e6 Nd6 the position shown in the first diagram. Neither opponent had time to spare; moreover, Black was already beginning to get into unpleasant time trouble.

After about 40 seconds followed a beautiful and crushing 29.e4!!

Clearing the diagonals for the pair of bishops! That is what I call this method in my training and writings! Bishops need open diagonals just as tanks need a clear path through a city. (The opponent, on the other hand, should try to block their way with barricades.) Here, White faced a fundamental and difficult problem. The move chosen is the only one that maintains a decisive advantage, while – moreover – all other continuations led at best to objective equality.

Dear readers, can you calculate the necessary variations?

Example for download RU and EN in pgn:  Gukesh – Alriyami_RU Gukesh – Alriyami_EN