Meet Kevin Goh: the Gukesh victim who bid for world chess’ biggest match

Kevin Goh Wei Ming can now claim that he played a role in the career of D. Gukesh, who became the youngest World chess champion in history on Thursday. It was after beating Goh in a tournament in Bangkok in 2018 that the Chennai lad, who won the World title after defeating Ding Liren in Singapore, secured his first Grandmaster norm. Ironically, the loss had spoiled Goh’s hopes of the final GM norm. He wasn’t done yet. As Singapore Chess Federation CEO, Goh led Singapore’s bid for hosting the World Championship, which became a resounding success. Excerpts from an interview with Grandmaster Goh:

So when did you think of bidding for the World Championship?

It was just an idea that I thought of. And then I was discussing with a couple of friends — they don’t really want to be named, and they were like, yes, you should. So I was speaking with some chess fans and they were like, ‘Dude, you should do this, man. It is the perfect thing to do.’ And we are neutral, you know, there are all these geopolitical situations. We are a multi-racial country, we have many people of Indian and Chinese origins.

What made you bid for it?

First of all, I am a chess fan. I would love chess to be played in my country. But aside from my selfish reasons, I think that there are a lot of positive narratives for Singaporeans in general. We were confident of our bid because of the geopolitical thing, for one thing, and a neutral country. There were many discussions behind the scenes with FIDE, with my team, with my government.

The government was very supportive. Everyone was proud that we could bring the prestige of this event to Singapore. There were some downsides about bidding, too. What if the event turns out to be a disaster, organisational lapses could happen. What if the glass [wall] collapsed in the middle of the match? What if we couldn’t handle the fans?

The fans, in fact, responded very well to the event, and the side-events, such as the simultaneous displays with some of the legends in the game, proved to be pretty popular.

Yes, [people like] Vishy [Anand] were gracious and generous with their time. So if you buy a VIP ticket, you literally walk in and you see Vishy on the couch.  

And you got Google as the sponsor… There aren’t too many bigger companies.

It was a conversation between me and Scott Beaumont, Google’s president of Asia-Pacific, that got it going. So I had a common connection and somehow got in touch and then we spoke. This is great for chess. And it’s great for Google as well, because, you know, there are so many connections between chess and AI.

And I thought he was pretty sold. In three days, he sent me an informal proposal. And that was it. I think that was a huge advantage that we had in our bid, because it shows that we have already secured some kind of in-principle support from a corporate giant.

I personally am a little bit disappointed that we couldn’t get more corporate sponsors in. And that is something that we need to reflect on and ask ourselves what we could have done better. Apart from Google, we had World Resorts Sentosa and Academic Labs.

How did you think Singapore benefited from hosting the World Championship?

I think the exposure of chess, and hopefully that young players will be inspired to learn the game. More people are aware of the benefits of the game and they want to learn chess. And hopefully we can somehow get chess in schools.

Your reflections on the match, as a Grandmaster? It turned out to be much closer than most people — especially top chess players — anticipated.

I was with the majority. Everybody thought so. So it was a pleasant surprise [the way things went]. It could have led to the kind of massacre which many players have suggested. And we did not want the match to end the way the 2021 match between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi did. From a chess point of view, we had a great match.

And you have a special connection with Gukesh, haven’t you?

That was not a positive experience. But it was fun.

You were one of the victims of Gukesh for his first Grandmaster norm, weren’t you?

Yes, it was at the Bangkok Chess Open tournament in 2018. He didn’t have a norm at the time [and I had two and was looking for my final norm]. I remember the game well. It was a London System, an opening featured at the World Championship here. I was playing white. So I went d4, d5, Bishop f4, Knight f6, e3, c5, Knight f3… As the game went on, I realised that it was not in my notes and I had no idea what to do. I reached some unpleasant isolated queen’s pawn position and he just grinded, you know, the whole endgame. It was very impressive.

He was 12 then, wasn’t he?

Yes.

Were you really surprised by the way he played in that game?

Yeah, very. And he had very good manners, by the way. He still has.

You probably could not have imagined that he would be playing for the World Championship and you would be hosting him…

Not even in my wildest dreams.

You were playing for Singapore at the Chennai Chess Olympiad, where Gukesh had his breakthrough performance, as he posted eight wins on the trot on the top board for India-2 and won the individual gold medal.

I noticed his fearlessness. The body language, the posture…. But there were some key advantages he had in that event. He had a bunch of friends, teammates around him. All of them were playing well. So this sort of energy is transferable. It could be like, you know, I have my friends next to me. They are all playing well. It gives me confidence.

That helped India at this year’s Olympiad at Budapest, too.

Definitely. Because you see Arjun [Erigaisi] winning most of his games. R. Praggnanandhaa is solid, so is Vidit Gujrathi. P. Harikrishna never loses.

You yourself have had a rather long Olympiad career.

I have been playing 30 years of chess and 20 years of Olympiad, more or less, yeah. I have missed only a few since my first Olympiad in 2004. Now I am done, but I will always be a chess player at heart.