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| Edited By: Reubyn Coutinho |Source: DNA |Updated: Jul 19, 2018, 06:10 AM IST
I think our last few performances are almost as good as you can get. Given the fact that there are so many strong roughly-balanced teams, I mean if you look at modern Olympiads, you don't get 4-0 results even on the first day or only very few teams benefit from this 4-0 boost. Which just shows that the gap has narrowed a lot. So, I think the main thing is to go there, try to do your best and deal with things as they come up rather than say that we finished fourth, now we're going to go third. That makes no sense. There are a lot of strong teams and you can play a very good Olympiad and still finish fifth if the last round goes one way or another. I think in the last two Olympiads, we've already done spectacularly well, in both Tromso and Baku. So I hope my participation will improve on that.
We've already had one training camp together but we know each other well and we've been quite often in tournaments. I mean literally most of the events I've played this year, I've met some of my teammates. How can you prepare for the Olympiad... you are not sure who your opponent is going to be. You are not sure which country your going to play. You'll do general work and a lot of the work will be done there. Camp is really a chance to get to know each other and exchange ideas.
No, I'm not particularly waiting for someone" (laugh) for someone to catch up but both (Pentala) Harikrishna and Vidit (Gujrathi) are extremely close. I mean we're all in the 2700 race and top of that if you look at (Krishnan) Sasikiran and Baskaran Adhiban, they have had some issues with consistency but otherwise they've also scaled and they've had performance ratings that are much higher. In fact, I think we are one of the most balanced teams, if not top five players, by rating we're quite balanced.
I don't know. Chess careers are still long compared to other sports. Almost all the guys have been playing for more than a decade. so I don't know I don't have any explanation.
I'm very happy and proud to have played the part of a catalyst and convinced, gotten a lot of people to try out the game of chess. Could have been more or less, I have no idea, but I was the first Grand Master in 1987 and now we have 52. So that's quite a growth. Obviously, someone like Praggnanandhaa (Rameshbabu) has done it at age of 12 , Nihal Sarin is two years older and Arvind Chidambaram is a few years older, but India's growth has been solid and consistent over the last 30 years, increasing steadily, compounding so to speak. I hope the Olympiad is a demonstration of that, but it has to happen at many levels. I hope the next will be some Indian getting into the Candidates and all these things happening as well.
I don't know. I like to think I'm playing well. Its tough, not like I'm competing with my compatriots alone. Our rivalry is not with each other rather you should see it as we happen to be part of a big group and we happen to be part of the same country but we're competing with a big group, maybe 2030, so if you are 2820 and above that's a very special group because then you are number 2 or 3 in world and unlikely to change after every tournament but below that 2795-2750 your ranking change in every game, so that's a more dynamic group. Once I was in topmost group, now I'm in 2nd and I'm fighting and trying to stay. Keep adapting, new ideas and new ways of training.
The first thing you have to develop the idea that fans talking about the sport is the whole point of having fans. So, I have no objection to people opining about the game. As for someone saying they're not impressed with my performance any more or they dont like it any more, that's a perfectly legitimate opinion. And for someone saying that I should stop, that's frankly a bit ridiculous because I don't see why I should stop any more than I see why anyone should stop. If you like playing, you play, but okay, free speech.
Our progress been steady, I hope for some new tournaments in India. We have a good circuit of open tournaments now, but I hope soon we'll have some big top ranked events. So that we can showcase that side as well, but otherwise, I think we have to keep building on what we're are doing.
The nature of chess has changed, if you look at almost all the new talent, none of them came from any programme or country that followed a corridor or nothing happened as a result of planning. I came from a country where no planning was happening, and with someone like (Magnus) Carlsen, it is more or less identical as he comes from a country where there is no chess. The way chess has gone it's become very decentralised. You log onto the internet, you find playing partners you work with coaches wherever they are, you play tournaments, when you have things you don't understand, you ask the computer. So chess is decentralising and I don't think it's amenable to the kind of planning. You can structure things a bit better but I don't think you should expect your talent to come from a programme or such any more. It simply doesn't work that way.
Well, it's like meeting an old friend, is how I keep describing. Once upon a time from 2003-2009 and even going back further from 1996-2008, I was simply the top ranked rapid chess player in the world. Except we didn't have rankings at that point in rapid chess specially or blitz. But I would consistently win the Mainz tournament and Amber Classic and I was fairly consistent at that point. From 2011 till 2013-14, I hardly played any rapid events cause they didn't exist. When it resumed, I found that I had lost my touch. When I won world rapid and blitz, it was a wonderful feeling in the sense that I remembered the last time I won it, but many people had forgotten that I was once best rapid player in the world. But in India winning world title is nice in itself. Another thing which I had forgotten was that a lot of people would come to me and say congrats World Champion. First reaction was to say 'yeah X'. or think 'X' and then no no no it's correct. I should enjoy this, it's a wonderful feeling.
Blitz rapid I think its wrong to have expectations as except for Carlsen in blitz and a few players who do well in rapid consistently, but hardly anyone wins consistently. So you can take someone like Wesley and Levon Aronian, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and say they're going to be the top 5, but you've no guarantee either way. In blitz, Carlsen's record is really stellar even in rapid his record is outstanding but aside from that there's hardly anyone who can give that sort of consistency. I think its more for personal validation, every once in a while you need a good result just to feel good about playing rapid games.
That's way above my station (laughs). First of all, I think it's fantastic.And second, the age of 12 has been holding consistently as the record (youngest GM) for atleast seven to eight years now and there are no 11-year olds. Seems nice to know that there is a minimum age for it. Praggnanandhaa came close to breaking the record. Lots of youngsters are taking to the game now. But in a way, I almost find it reassuring, that you still need some time to master chess to become a GM.
My advice to him is that he should keep things normal. It's a long journey and he should be in it for the long haul.
I have no regrets to where I was born and what I meant is you have access to training and all that literally went by geography, that's no longer the case. India is not a bad place to play chess now. It's also very competitive. So, even at the junior stages they compete so hard, that I think it's almost better to be born somewhere else to have an easier chance at winning or qualifying for the events.
