India, Dec. 17 -- In a post-match evening inside the dinner hall of a five-star hotel in the city where teams competing in the Global Chess League (GCL) are put up, two large tables were connected together.

A team dinner was on the anvil for the upGrad Mumba Masters, which features two foreign stars in Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Wesley So, two leading Indian female players in Koneru Humpy and Harika Dronavalli, and P Harikrishna as the non-playing captain, among others. On the table was Indian food and, safe to assume, plenty of chess talk.

This was a setting so peculiar for a sport so individual.

Apart from the Olympiad, a team environment in top level chess is rare. It is what makes a franchise league like the GCL, held in India for ...