Chess-playing siblings arrive in Toronto for international competition

The black shuttle bus creaks to a stop in a puddle along Queen St. in Toronto, and a dozen drenched autograph hounds holding chess boards crowd around.

.Dommaraju Gukesh of India waits for his opponent before the start of Round 12. Five of the 16 players in this year’s tournament hail from India, an unprecedented number of entrants. This is precisely the kind of noise most players try to avoid heading into big tournaments. And the Rameshbabus are up to the moment, thanks in large part to the constant presence of Nagalakshmi, dubbed “super mom” in the Indian press.

Mercifully, a welcome flank attack comes walking down the sidewalk in the form of Hikaru Nakamura, perhaps the world’s most popular chess player thanks to a lucrative video-streaming empire and a world number-three ranking. The autograph seekers turn toward him instead. Vaishali showed an innate aptitude, eventually winning the World Youth Chess Championship for under-12Intrigued by her sister’s obsession, Praggnanandhaa – or just Prag, as he’s more often called – started playing at age three. By age 12, he had become a grandmaster, the second-youngest person at the time to achieve the lofty designation.Nagalakshmi Rameshbabu, mother of rising chess stars Vaishali and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, watches her children compete in the Round 12 matches.

On their way to the game floor, players enter a security screening area, where they are scanned for phones, watches and any other possible cheating aids hidden anywhere on the body. It is an unfortunate precaution that’s necessary given recent cheating allegations, the most tawdry of which devolved into broadcaster Piers Morgan asking a young grandmaster on air if he’d ever used remote vibrating anal beads to cheat while playing chess.Hikaru Nakamura of the U.S.

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