Bengaluru: It was close to New Year’s Eve, after the World Rapid and Blitz tournament last year, when Pentala Harikrishna received a call from Gukesh. “I didn’t have the faintest idea of what he had in mind,” the 38-year-old Indian GM told HT. Turned out, the Indian teen, and now newly-crowned world champion, was calling to ask if he would be willing to help him with preparation for the Candidates.

Harikrishna joined the team, Gukesh ended up winning the Candidates and the World Championship match against China’s Ding Liren was on the horizon. Interestingly, Harikrishna had spent the greater part of last year helping a Chinese player prepare for a match against a fellow Chinese. He was second to reigning women’s world champion Ju Wenjun for her Women’s World Championship match against Lei Tingjie.

The former world No.10 Indian’s bonds with China go back a long way. He has played several seasons in the Chinese Chess League for the Shanghai team and was teammates with Ni Hua, who was Ding’s second for this match. Ni Hua was also part of Ju Wenjun’s team, alongside Harikrishna for last year’s match.

“I’ve been playing with and against Chinese players for a very long time. Many of the Chinese players are my close friends. So, you could say I understand Chinese players quite well – how they think, approach games and what absolute fighters they are,” Harikrishna said. Gukesh’s trainer Grzegorz Gajewski told this publication earlier how Harikrishna’s inputs on the Chinese set-up were useful.

“It’s the reason why when I was asked before the match, I didn’t say things like ‘it will be a super easy match’ or a ‘massacre’. I saw how Ju Wenjun fought back when she was trailing in the match. It’s always how it is. They can appear tired and done, but it’s never like that. They fight till the very end and until the resignation actually happens, it’s never over. It’s funny how I helped a Chinese beat a Chinese last year and an Indian beat a Chinese this year.”

Among Harikrishna’s Chinese friends, is a certain Ding Liren. “In 2019, he visited my home in Prague when he was in the city to play (David) Navara. Ding is my good friend actually. I’m happy that he played much better than what people expected from him. He’s just a superb person and a really modest guy.”

In the run-up to the match, Gukesh along with the rest of the team had multiple camps in India and Warsaw. “It was impressive to see the way Gukesh was approaching the match and the work needed for it. We worked quite a lot on endgames. We also had online sessions where we would analyse some endgames or middlegames. It was an interesting experience to compare our ideas with engines and check how close we were to the good part.”

Days before the German-Polish-Indian trio of Vincent Keymer, Radoslaw Wojtaszek and Harikrishna were to arrive in Malaga ahead of the match, bunk together and assist Gukesh remotely, floods hit the Costa del Sol region of southern Spain. “Thankfully the situation improved in a few days. The best part of the location was that we were seven hours behind Singapore time. It gave us a lot of time to work when Gaju and Guki went to bed. Once we were satisfied, we would send across the ideas to them so that they could run a check once they woke up.”

Harikrishna calls working on the “opening surprises” the most exciting part of the job. “When you check these opening surprises with the engine it tells you that you’re worse because obviously it’s a sub-optimal move. Not everyone will check as deep perhaps. But when you’re faced with such ideas on the board, it’s very unpleasant. Ding ended up spending a lot of his time in the openings, so our ideas were a success I suppose…The Re1 idea (from Game 7) was found by Vincent some months ago, and it was just in store. On the rest day before the game, we double-checked and refined it so Gukesh could get the maximum out of it.”

Unlike a decade ago, these days, with stronger engines, the roles in a player’s team aren’t as strongly demarcated. “Earlier, one team member would come up with ideas, the second guy would give it structure, then the third guy would make sure everything is working and in order. Now all of us come up with different ideas in the same position, often, discuss its pros and cons, and arrive at a conclusion,” says Harikrishna. “Since I’m more of an intuitive player, I could chip in with which openings might have better chances and which might not land, perhaps.”

In their seaside villa in Manilva, on the southwestern edge of Malaga though, Keymer, Wojtaszek and Harikrishna had clearly defined domestic roles – Keymer was in charge of cooking, Radek driving, and Harikrishna was on cleaning duty.

During Game 14, the three of them decided to head to a nearby restaurant for lunch. “We thought it’s going to be a long night and dinner was probably ruled out, so we might as well grab some lunch while the game is on. We were already thinking what to play in the next day’s tie-breaks and were running out of ideas at some point. Then Rf2 happened and the match was decided.

“We were shouting and jumping like crazy at the restaurant. We were so emotional, so relieved and just like that our appetite was gone.”