‘We saw tanks on the road’: What it’s like to play chess in a regional conflict

New Delhi: Cyprus, an island nation in the eastern Mediterranean, will host the open and women’s divisions of the 2026 Candidates Championship starting on March 28 and will be home to some of the best classical chess competitions over the next two weeks. As the only path to the world championship, the event has carried months of mounting anticipation among the global chess community. However, the atmosphere surrounding the event is heavy, with pre-match uncertainty and tensions in the Middle East affecting the event.One high-profile participant has fallen into a state of anxiety. Indian veteran Koneru Humpy withdrew from the women’s tournament days before the opening ceremony. Concerns have spread elsewhere. World No. 2 Hikaru Nakamura has warned of a lack of stable power supply in the region, while the recent cancellation of World Series of Poker (WSOP) events in the region due to security risks has cast a shadow on FIDE’s plans.In response, the International Chess Federation (FIDE) issued a “Safety and Logistics FAQ” five days before the tournament, arguing that the risks were “extremely low and exaggerated.” But for the player, the board is never truly isolated from the world. How does it feel to strategize grandly when you know global tensions are brewing outside the walls?In September 1978, a young Pravin Thipsay, decades away from becoming India’s third grandmaster, arrived in Tehran along with former national champion Mohamed Rafiq Khan. They came to play football, but the Iran they entered was a country with a roaring monarchy.Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s pro-Western monarchy collapsed under the weight of massive citizen resistance. On September 8, 1978, a day known as “Black Friday,” the military opened fire on protesters in Tehran, killing hundreds and signaling the regime’s irreversibility.“Well, when I was young, I was in Iran during the Shah’s regime, which was after September 8, 1978, when students were demonstrating,” Tipsay told TimesofIndia.com. “So when we did get into the city, we saw tanks on the road and there were other issues, but the important thing is we saw tanks on the road and it was unsettling for a day or so.”In the 1970s, the chess world was smaller and more isolated. Players travel to a faraway land with only a set of pockets and a few letters of introduction. There were no smartphones, no social media to provide real-time updates on troop movements.“We felt a little weird and not being able to get news, and it was our first time in Iran,” recalls Tipsey. “We don’t know anything about it. I am also very young. There were Russians and Americans playing, and other Filipinos, and other players. So I think we live in our own world. “The competition was held at the Olympic Village in Tehran. “It’s far from the city and access is restricted, so we rarely go out,” he explains. This physical separation is compounded by a complete linguistic and digital lockdown. “We didn’t get any news from the outside because in those days in 1978, no one in Iran spoke English and newspapers were in Iranian. So we can’t really get any information. There’s no TV,” he told the website.Today, players are highly interconnected. They pay close attention to geopolitical changes as much as to new things. But by 1978, things were different.“Even when I played at the World Juniors, I didn’t have any way of contacting my parents over the phone. I just wrote some letters. I never got a reply because it took a lot of time,” Tipsey said.In the weeks following the game, the Iranian revolution accelerated, culminating in the Shah’s exile in January 1979 and the rise of the Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Khomeini. “We didn’t see any direct violence in front of us, the tanks were just for control, to prevent mobs from gathering,” the 66-year-old said. “I think I saw it and it didn’t really affect me at the time. I don’t know if it wouldn’t affect me today, or if it wouldn’t affect other players, but that was the only experience I had and we just played a game.”Although the revolution did not penetrate the Olympic Village, natural factors did. “We didn’t do too well because it was cold,” Tipsey admitted. “I think that’s the main reason. It was surprisingly cold at night.”However, Iranian players must already be feeling the pressure of the coming storm. Under the subsequent new regime, chess was eventually banned for several years, deemed “un-Islamic”, before being reinstated in the late 1980s. But in the fall of 1978, the silence between locals and foreigners painted a clear picture of the global predicament, Tipsey concluded: “We, myself and Rafiq Khan or the Russians, the Americans, the Filipinos were not affected. And the Iranians, if they were affected, we didn’t know, but they never discussed these things with us.”