World Chess Championship: Meet D Gukesh’s father and Ding Liren’s mother – the Grandmasters’ most important seconds | Chess News

The lift opens and a smiling Ding Liren emerges, flanked his seconds Ni Hua and Richard Rapport. They seem to be engrossed in a serious chess conversation understandably, since they’re on their way to a serious battle that’s afoot to retain the World Championship crown. As the camera moves with Ding and his two lieutenants there is a fourth figure who stays a couple of steps behind, wanting to stay out of the glare. But it’s a futile attempt, as Ding pauses mid-step, turns back, smiles, and waves her an innocent goode.It’s Ding Liren’s mother, Ye Xiaoping, the woman who introduced the 17th world champion to chess at the age of four in China’s Wenzhou. In another life, Ye Xiaoping used to work as a nurse in a hospital. These days she spends her time being a travel companion to her 32-year-old son.
A few minutes later, the man presently occupying the most real estate in Ding Liren’s mind – D Gukesh – also power-walks his way into the playing hall past screaming fans. Coincidentally, he too breaks stride for a few seconds to turn back to wave at his father Dr Rajini Kanth – an ENT special who quit his well-paying practice to be a full-time chaperone to his teenage son.
D Gukesh with his father Dr Rajini Kanth. (FIDE/Maria Emelianova)
Enough has been spoken about the role that Grzegorz Gajewski has been playing in helping Gukesh chart his way to becoming the youngest world champion in hory. There is also plenty about the roles that Richard Rapport and Ni Hua have played in Ding Liren’s prep for the world championship.
But the most important seconds in the team of Gukesh and Ding Liren have very little to do with the moves they make on the board. When it comes to propping up the spirits of both the players as they go through the emotional and physical grind of playing in a world championship match in Singapore, Ye Xiaoping and Dr Rajini Kanth are possibly the most important members of the two entourages.
In Singapore, as his inscrutable-looking son plays in the most high-pressure games of his life, Rajini has taken to occasionally pacing around non-stop in corridors of the Equarius Hotel where the match is being played on Sentosa Island. After games get over, he’s his son’s side in a flash, accompanying him to the press conference room at times and then walking him to the vehicle that whisks them off. Almost like he’s there to run interference in case anyone tries to dract the most serious teenager in the world.
Occasionally, the father turns photographer, clicking snaps of fans with his son when they’re stopped on the way to the van. “As usual I’m here with my dad. He pretty much takes care of everything away from chess so that I can focus fully on my job. My mom is also supporting me in her own way from home,” Gukesh said at one of the press conferences.
Ding’s perpetually smiling mother, on the other hand, slips in and out of rooms in Singapore always keeping her son in eyeline. After a press conference, as Ding and his second go up the escalator towards their private transport flanked cell-phone-bearing media folks, Ye Xiaoping bounds up the adjoining stairs, not wanting to be in the frame. It is learned that she even accompanied her son as he picked out his chair for the 14-game match.
“Here, my mother is accompanying me. As usual. She wakes me up and sometimes provides food for me. She’s doing her job,” Ding Liren said.
But away from the overblown glare of the World Championship, at events like Norway Chess, one really sees the emotional support that Ding Liren’s mother provides him with. At Stavanger, during the Norway Chess tournament, as her son played the most shaky chess of his career, she was always at hand when he was away from the chess board.
There are other chess parents around as well: Magnus Carlsen’s father Henrik, who has never been in the spectators’ area while his son plays since Magnus’ childhood days; Praggnanandhaa and Vaishali’s mother Nagalakshmi, who prefers to find a corner away from the eyesight of both her kids in the playing hall. But Ding’s mother always seemed to find a spot directly in his eyeline. When things got hairy on the board, Ding looked away and seemed to search for the comforting sight of his mother among the fans. Only for a brief second. As soon as he ended his game, she was there, always, with a reassuring hand on his arm.
In Norway, with limited cameras trained on her son, she was more hands-on. She straightened his suit as he got mic’d up for an interview, handed him a banana after a particularly intense game, and even went for walks with him on rest days.

If Ding’s rise in chess can be traced back to one decision his mother made when he was four, Gukesh’s rise has come after many of Rajini’s sacrifices (he dislikes that word in this context), starting with quitting his booming practice. “When Gukesh started playing in events abroad, I had to quit my practice at both my clinics. My wife was in a government job, so we decided she should continue,” Rajini had once told The Indian Express. “I’m still not sure what I’m doing with my career. But that’s okay.”