The Art Of Preparation
The Men, the Machines
(and the Psychic Mediums)
When the eight men and eight women sit down in Cyprus for the 2026 Candidates Tournament, the public will see fourteen rounds of gruelling chess. But the real battle begins months earlier, in preparation rooms scattered across the globe. Behind every contender stands a small army: seconds, coaches, sparring partners, data scientists, and sometimes, hypnotists who eat glass.
Preparation for the Candidates has always been an arms race. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was about psychic mediums and parapsychologists. Today, it is about supercomputers, AI, and teams of grandmasters earning six‑figure salaries. The goal remains the same: to find the one novelty, the one psychological edge, that turns a contender into a champion.
The 1985 World Championship match between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov is remembered for its drama on the board, but the sidelines were even stranger. After Kasparov fell 0‑4 behind, his team summoned a psychic medium from Azerbaijan, Tofik Dadashev, who claimed he could “penetrate” Karpov’s nervous system. Karpov later said Dadashev destroyed his concentration in one game. Meanwhile, Karpov’s own aide, Grisha Rozhkovsky, was a hypnotist who, after a tough loss, pulled out a piece of glass and began crunching it – a stunt that Karpov never forgot.
— Anatoly Karpov
Korchnoi, never one to be outdone, hired two gurus from the Ananda Marga sect for his 1978 world championship match against Karpov. They were reportedly out on bail while contesting charges of murder. When Karpov brought his own parapsychologist, Vladimir Suchar, the result was less dramatic: Suchar sat beside Karpov’s bed for two nights muttering, but failed to induce sleep.
These days, such esoteric aides have largely disappeared. But the psychological warfare continues – now waged with supercomputers and armies of seconds.
Today’s top players assemble teams that would rival small corporations. When Gukesh Dommaraju prepared for his world championship victory in 2024, he had six grandmasters: Grzegorz Gajewski, Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Pentala Harikrishna, Vincent Keymer, Jan‑Krzysztof Duda, and Jan Klimkowski. Each had a specific role: opening preparation, endgame analysis, sparring in faster time controls. The team also included mental coach Paddy Upton, famous for his work with cricket teams.
11 members, including separate coaches for opening, middlegame, and endgame.
Cost: €60,000/year for her personal coach alone.
4 seconds + massage therapist, physio, cook.
Total preparation cost: over $1 million.
Kazakh grandmaster Bibisara Assaubayeva, who will make her Candidates debut in Cyprus, revealed the scale of modern preparation. Her team numbers 11, including sparring partners and phase‑specific coaches. “You can’t have just one opening coach, because they cannot handle the volume of information,” she said. She pays her personal coach €1,000 per day.
For many players, secrecy is paramount. Teams often operate under nondisclosure agreements, and the identities of seconds are guarded until after the tournament. The arms race means that financial resources increasingly dictate the quality of preparation – a fact that has spurred crowdfunding efforts like the one that raised €21,000 for Matthias Blübaum.
Before the era of powerful personal computers, players sought help from government‑level hardware. In 2021, Ian Nepomniachtchi prepared for the Candidates with the help of Zhores, a supercomputer at Moscow’s Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology. It evaluated tens of millions of positions per second, giving Nepo’s team an edge in opening preparation.
Even more dramatic was Veselin Topalov’s preparation for his 2010 world championship match against Viswanathan Anand. Topalov was loaned Blue Gene/P, one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, by the Bulgarian Ministry of Defence. It ran on 8,792 processors using the Rybka engine. Anand later revealed that he only neutralised Topalov’s opening advantage because he had help from three world champions: Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, and Magnus Carlsen.
— The Indian Express
Today, every elite player has access to powerful engines and databases. The differentiation comes from how teams curate that information, how they prepare novelties that are both computer‑verified and human‑understandable, and how they manage the psychological toll of the fourteen‑round marathon.
Secrecy around preparation has intensified. Fabiano Caruana has reportedly assembled a team that includes Rustam Kasimdzhanov and several young GMs, focusing on neutralizing rivals like Nakamura. Hikaru Nakamura has used his St. Louis base to run training matches, most recently against Awonder Liang. R Praggnanandhaa is working with his long‑time coach R.B. Ramesh, and benefits from the support of sister Vaishali, herself a Candidates participant.
For the first‑time qualifiers – Sindarov, Wei Yi, Esipenko, Blübaum – the challenge is twofold: they must build preparation teams from scratch while learning to manage the unique pressure of the Candidates. Blübaum’s €86,000 funding from German institutions will allow him to hire dedicated seconds for the first time, a crucial equaliser.
Meanwhile, the women’s field is equally intense. Anna Muzychuk replaces the withdrawn Humpy, while Divya Deshmukh and R Vaishali carry Indian hopes, supported by the same Chennai ecosystem that produced Gukesh and Pragg.
Preparation is not only about openings. Players now employ physical trainers, nutritionists, and mental coaches. Magnus Carlsen famously used football and cardio to stay sharp. Nakamura has spoken about strict sleep schedules. Gukesh worked with Paddy Upton for six months before the 2024 world championship, focusing on mental resilience.
In Cyprus, players will also contend with the Mediterranean climate, jet lag, and the psychological weight of security concerns following recent regional tensions. FIDE has arranged alternative travel routes, but the off‑board distractions may be the most unpredictable variable.
The Candidates has always been a tournament where the best‑prepared sometimes falter, and the under‑prepared sometimes soar. As MVL noted this week, even Magnus Carlsen would not be a 40% favourite in this format. Preparation can reduce uncertainty, but it cannot eliminate it.
When the players arrive in Cyprus, the preparation rooms will fall silent. The seconds will pack their laptops, the novelties will be memorised, and the teams will take a final breath. Then, on 29 March, the board will decide.
Will it be a novelty prepared by a supercomputer? A psychological edge honed by a mental coach? Or simply a moment of brilliance born from years of practice? The history of the Candidates tells us that the winner is often the one whose team best prepared not only the moves, but the moments.
From glass‑eating hypnotists to $1 million supercomputers, the art of preparation has evolved. But the goal remains unchanged: to be the last one standing when the gauntlet is thrown.
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