Sagar Shah On World Champion Gukesh, Samay Raina, Chess In India, And More

IM Sagar Shah, cofounder and CEO of ChessBase India, is a major force for chess not just in India, but throughout the entire chess world. Chess would not be where it is today without the work that Sagar and ChessBase India have done to cover and promote the game.

Chess.com recently took the opportunity to interview Sagar, who was extremely gracious with his time, as our Creator of the Month for December 2024. We discussed the beginnings of ChessBase India, how its team creates content, just how much comedian Samay Raina has helped, what GM Gukesh Dommajaru's recent world championship victory means for chess, and much, much more.

What inspired you to co-found ChessBase India? Was there any specific moment? How did the partnership with Frederic Friedel come about?

I first met Frederic at the 2013 World Championship between [GM Viswanathan] Anand and [GM Magnus] Carlsen. In 2014, when I got married, I wrote an article about how chess was part of my marriage: We had organized a small tournament, my and my wife Amruta's rings were in the shape of a king and queen, the decorations were chess-themed... I sent the article to Frederic without much expectation, but to my surprise, it was up on ChessBase.com within a couple hours!

Frederic also wrote back to me saying he really enjoyed my writing. I definitely had a knack for it, which Frederic identified, even if I sometimes made grammatical or punctuation errors. He spent over a year really helping me to become a better writer, correcting my articles with yellow marker. Amruta and I then started going to different tournaments to cover them for ChessBase—we realized that Indian chess needed more exposure. A lot of great players didn't even have a picture of themselves! Amruta really likes photography and I like to write, so it was a really great team.

I also understood that the ChessBase program was used by any serious chess player, but was not easily available in India. We asked if we could sell it here at a price that was more affordable in India compared to the United States or Europe, and ChessBase was kind enough to support this idea. We launched ChessBase India toward end of 2015 and incorporated in India in January 2016, and that is how it all began.

What are your proudest achievements for ChessBase India?

One achievement we are particularly happy and proud about is our YouTube channel and social media presence, where we have been constantly churning out content for more than seven years now, and also our website which has articles every single day. Our YouTube channel has over 14,000 videos and more than 2.1 billion views! We are able to cover everything from world championship matches to small tournaments. The inclusivity we want to bring to chess, which we are trying our best to bring with our YouTube channel, is something we are proud of.

If you had to pick a single piece of chess content that best represents the work done by ChessBase India, what would it be and why?

One series that worked particularly well was Grandmaster Chess. We have always aimed to integrate educational content that helps others with entertainment, keeping it fun for people who watch. It's a very tough balance to maintain!

We were able to bring together absolute legends like Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, top Indian players like Vidit, and many other masters. We would choose 10 critical moments from their best game of chess, and the answers to those had to be given by comedians. At the end, points were awarded and a winner chosen.

This series ticked all the check boxes we wanted: create educational content that is useful to people, and make it fun and exciting. I'm very proud of it. There are 20 episodes, and if someone wants to see the difference in thinking between a world-class player and people who are trying to improve, that series provides it.

What is the creative process like at ChessBase India? What types of content or content trends are of particular interest when creating content?

Because we have focused quite a lot on a player-first approach, we hardly ever sit and ideate on next piece of content. Instead, we are looking at the next player who is performing well. We want to interview that person and bring out his or her story and games on social media posts. That has been the entire approach, so the next tournament coming up or next player doing well is where the content flows from for us.

What growth strategies has ChessBase India pursued? What has been the most important moment or two in the growth of ChessBase India?

One of the things we always kept in mind is to take a player-first approach for everything and anything we do, which also means supporting the ecosystem. That is how we've tried to build.

If I look at the journey of ChessBase India, some of the key things that led to the growth was the rise of the young talents, events like Tata Steel Chess India before the pandemic, and the pandemic was a boost to us, too. But unlike what happened in the rest of the world, where The Queen's Gambit provided the boost, in India it was standup comedians like Samay Raina, Biswa Kalyan Rath, Vaibhav Sethia, and Anirban DasGupta. They really pushed chess to the masses and made so many people fall in love with the sport.

ChessBase India does seem to have a very close relationship with Samay Raina. Can you talk about the role he—or any of other creators ChessBase India works with—has played in the growth of ChessBase India, and of chess in India generally?

The impact that Samay has had on chess has been absolutely massive. I cannot overstate what he brought into chess. First of all, he broke down the barrier of the idea that chess is only a sport for the very intelligent or for people that are kind of crazy. He made chess fun, he made it exciting, and he brought his entire group of standup comedians to join in: Biswa, Vaibhav, Anirban, Tanmay Bhat, Abish Mathew—you name a comedian, and he brought them in. He did so many collaborations with people during the pandemic and he just brought chess to the masses. 

I remember a stream where he collaborated with the absolutely huge YouTube creators Carry Minati and Bhuvan Bam. You can imagine a video like this has so much value because anyone who is a fan of Kari or Bhuvan—which is millions of people!—will see them play chess and also want to try it. Recently, during the 2024 Candidates Tournament, Samay also got big YouTubers like Druv Rathee and others to play chess.

What makes Samay original is that he had such popularity in chess that he could have built his own channel and his own audience around it. But what he did instead was bring everyone together. He would readily go on everyone's channel, including ChessBase India, and at that point there were so many other players who where streaming like Adhiban [Baskaran], Anish [Giri], and [Teimour] Radjabov that he helped out. He'd teach the OBS streaming software to others, he'd share tips on how to grow a channel, he would give people superchats, he brought the chess community into fundraisers inviting Magnus, inviting Vishy... just watching what he was doing was unbelievable.

For big events like Comedians on Board, or the Chess Super League that ChessBase India did with Samay, he'd think how to promote them, and he'd even create songs—there's even this song about me! He would do these songs and I used to wonder why, but then they would help to popularize the event! ChessBase India did our own song recently as well, "Go Go Guki Go", for the World Championship.

I learned so much from Samay about how to promote chess and how to bring it to the masses. I'm always very grateful for him for all that he has contributed to chess. So many new people have come into the ecosystem of chess—even programmers or marketing people who are now seeing chess as a serious career opportunity.

I don't think it would been possible if Samay hadn't picked up chess during the pandemic. A huge kudos to him. 

What does Gukesh's victory in the world championship mean to you for chess, chess in India, and/or ChessBase India?

Gukesh's victory is the start of a new era in chess, especially a new chapter in Indian chess: a boy who dreamt of becoming not just the world champion, but the youngest world champion. I used to think that he first mentioned this in our interview when he was 11 years old, but later I realized he'd done it much sooner! At the age of eight he had already written down that he wanted to become the youngest world champion, and then that young boy actually managed to accomplish that goal when he was 18.  

Gukesh has really caught the fancy not just of the chess viewers in India, but each and every person. Since the match ended, I have been stopped more times on the street than ever before, and congratulated for Gukesh's achievements! That just goes to show that chess reached a lot of people during this match. I'd also like to give major credit to Avadh Shah, who is the director Chess.com's India branch, because he was very certain that the match was an opportunity to make a huge broadcast together, where ChessBase India, Chess.com India, Chess.com, Samay, Tania [Sachdev], and everyone else came together and built this entire operation.

I believe that impact of this is going to be new people, new companies, and new stakeholders who will want to come into chess seeing the interest rise, and it will lead to new opportunities for ChessBase India, or for anyone who is in chess in India—new possibilities opening up to develop the broader ecosystem even further.

What is your favorite thing about ChessBase India and/or your role in it?

My favorite thing about ChessBase India and the role I play is that I have absolutely no lines around my personal or professional life—it all merges into one. The people who I work with are whatever i do in chess are my other ppl in my personal life so there's no distinction between personal and professional life, and every day of the week is a lot of fun.

I look forward to each and every day, and most of the time I don't even know which day of the week it is! I think more in weeks than in days, so I'll know if I'm traveling to the United States on the 22nd, or I'm going to a tournament on the 24th, but I couldn't tell you what day of the week the dates are. I think this is quite contrary to someone leading this life where Monday to Friday is work and Saturday and Sunday are of, but I can take off when I want to and work when I want to.