Today it was a very interesting day for us at the Chess Gurukul class. While the class was going on, many of the kids complained that they have some form or other of fear while playing the game and this is preventing them from actually playing and enjoying the game. It ranged from fear of losing the game,fear of the opponent,fear of the position on the board,fear of reaction of parents incase of unfavourable result,fear of peer comments etc. It sounded like I had travelled to my past and listening to myself! I had all these fears and more too

It is in these kind of situations I feel the responsibility of being a coach for young kids become quite challenging and interesting too. My heart went out to these kids and I was struck with an inspiring idea and decided to try it out and see if it works.

I gave a small lecture which went something like this… it is quite natural to have such doubts and fears and nothing wrong about that. I explained even the World Champions ( forgive me Anand, I had to!) and the Grand Masters (at least I did !) have many of these thoughts and doubts but the secret is in how to handle these emotions properly and keep them under some sort of balance instead of letting them loose. The main thing is not to react negatively to such disturbing thoughts. We should just tell our mind patiently and sincerely to focus on what we should be doing instead of worrying about what might happen in future. This sounds easy but does it work in practice?

We did a small experiment. I suggested to the kids that we will all close our eyes and sincerely tell our minds to remind us when the time is 7:30pm. When we did this it was 6:55pm. The kids got excited and closed their eyes and did the same along with me. Then we continued our analysis of an interesting game by Smirin from white side of Petroff defence played recently.

Then after sometime I looked at the kids and we all looked at the clock and it was 7:26pm! I immediately told them not to worry and try again. They all got excited again and we decided to set our target at 7:35pm. Again we continued with our analysis and this time we made sure the clock was hidden out of sight. And after few minutes many children said ” Sir look at the time now!” 

AND IT WAS  7:35pm !!!

We were all so happy. I think I made my point that we could have what we want if we want it with all our heart and passion and sincerity. We can control our thoughts with simple instructions and slowly we can learn to overcome our fears.

I have requested the kids to try this experiment on various daily activities and let me know about the result. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

It is high time that I write a blog about piracy as I have had countless discussions with my friends and family regarding this topic and it is definitely worth sharing with the world. The word ‘piracy’ really does not mean much to most people around unless they are directly involved in selling any product that can be pirated!

To begin with I have to say that being a chess grand master I am quite ashamed that most of the chess programs that I used up until last year were pirated. I downloaded them from wherever possible and it seemed pretty harmless to me personally. Comparing my action here to match fixing in any other sport would be rather exaggerating, but however it is an act that thoroughly has been disrespectful to the sport that I have loved and cherished all my life. The sport that has given me everything, including education, a roof and my food deserves a little more I guess. In normal comparison it equates to someone who can afford to buy books, but decided to steal it from a different place say X, irrelevant of the fact if the place X has that book in abundance or not, it is just that act that feels so wrong.

Really? How can something be bad if the whole world does it? When every single song that comes out and every single movie that is released is available in the internet, sometimes even before they hit the theaters! It cannot be wrong to just watch them, can it? So many things that we do in today’s world are what I like to call “mechanical”. Yeah, more like a machine than a man. Lot of our actions are based on pre-existing “norms” and sometimes we do not use our logics to determine what is right or wrong and just flow with the crowd. Think of it this way,
If you were born in an Arab country, restricting women from driving could be normal;
If you were born in India arranged marriage would be totally logical;
If you were born in America, leaving the lights on when leaving a room would not even feel like wasting electricity, because it is available in abundance.

All these practices have evolved over a long period of time for various reasons and even though I know a lot of very reasonable people who believe these activities are normal, the above mentioned points do not seem logical to me. Hence I should not be practicing these ideas even if they were taught to me by my parents or my social surrounding. Hold on! I am not saying I am perfect, I am NO SAINT, I make a lot of mistakes, but I would just like to be aware of all the reasons behind my actions. My point here is to stress that we should not always believe what we are taught to believe by our ancestors or by our social environment, but think on our own and see what would make sense?

Piracy is one huge threat to our community today because it is just common practice. No one who downloads a song from the internet feels like robbing a store, but in reality that is what they are doing. When I walk by a Crocodile showroom and I see a T-Shirts prized for over 200 Euros and I also know that I can get a reasonable one from the store around the corner for 30 bucks, I do not seem to walk into the store with a golf club and smash the glass door into pieces and take them away for free? Over the internet someone has already smashed that glass door open, so we are not bothered to just walk in and pick up some free stuff.

If we are the educated, if we are the literate and if we are the people who have the exposure to the world and we indulge in stealing aka piracy what would those poor uneducated people from rural areas teach their kids? Then again they may not be corrupted by the concrete jungles we live in and they might still have some moral values left in them.

Law enforcement cannot stop crime, it can only control it to a certain extent. Crime can be stopped only when those who want to commit crimes change their mind. Every time you are downloading from the internet you are directly affecting someone’s business. Now the person you are stealing from maybe a millionaire already, but you are no Robin Hood! Watching a movie or listening to a new song is still a luxury in this life, it is not a necessity. So if you do not have the money or if you feel wronged by the prize of the product, just boycott it, get it when you feel it is worth it, but do not download it, please buy it. Be courteous on the web and be patient, good things will always come back to you.

Last but not the least, I am not suggesting that everyone live by the rules all the time. Rules are meant to be broken, that is what makes our lives interesting. Ofcourse if your friend calls up and says there is this new hot pic of a British babe on the net, you may have no other choice to put aside your principles and download it!!! but keep that as a rarity rather than as a practice. Just living by rules will make you a Robot, and your life would become too predictable and boring… Break them once in a while to stay sexy!

“Be the change that you want to see in this world”
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

With the biting cold wind ravaging through the place
I walk into the shower like a boxer to his bout
Feeling the warmth of the water that brushes through my face
Here I am, staring at my soap and I just can’t figure it out

My mind starts wandering with no sense of time
Twenty minutes of my precious life just ticking by
As thoughts fill my maze with questions not worth a dime
Here I am, staring at my soap, I am just an ordinary guy

I keep wondering if what I ‘know’ is what it really ‘is’
If time were to be an illusion, then can I trust my memory?
Faith is a luxury destined for those with an eternal bliss
Nothing is real in this unrealistic world, is my theory

Did I lather myself already? is the question that shook my world
And here I am, staring at my soap, and I still cant figure it out!

I was happy to be present there in the role of a coach. SP Sethuraman had just won the Gold medal in the Under 16 boys’ category and young Ivana Maria Furtado had won the Silver medal in the Under 10 Girls category. These two train with me often. Indian team as a whole had won 1 Gold, 3 Silver and 2 Bronze in different categories. Though this number is less compared to the medals tally in the 2008 edition at Vietnam, it was still a pretty decent count. I was quite content about this.

Remaining Objective:

When I saw Sethuraman and Ivana getting the prize I couldn’t help getting little emotional myself. Now this opens some important related questions for me. Should the coach become emotionally involved with students performance? If yes then does it not affect the objectivity of the coach – student relationship?

After all a coach should be able to assess the students objectively and teach them things they need to learn without letting emotional issues getting in the way. For example, lets say a student takes some risk and loses a game as a result, then it is easy for the coach to suggest to the student to take less risk in the ensuing games but as a trainer one should teach young children to take calculated risks as it is one of the important qualities of a world class player. Here we see the result of a single game can affect the objectivity of the coach if he is not careful.

Personally I try very hard to not to assess my students based purely on their results in a tournament but also to keep in mind other pertinent things like the general working habit, the level of motivation of the player, commitment to succeed despite occasional setbacks etc…After all it is these qualities that will differentiate a champion from normal mortals…But it is not easy to remain unaffected by the students results at all times.

Tip of the iceberg:

I have worked with many chess players in different age categories and different levels of achievement and I have learnt a lot as a result of these interactions. Still I feel I have just touched the tip of the iceberg. Teaching young children something (anything) is quite a complex task. My main priorities while trying to teach chess to someone is to first get them interested in the game and then to teach them to learn the champion qualities along with Chess related things.

Champion qualities :

A student should have/ develop/ learn/cultivate the following qualities to become a strong player in the long run in my opinion.

Love for the game, commitment to succeed at all costs, an understanding that there are no short cuts available and that appropriate hard work should be put, ability to handle wins and losses more calmly, take logical decisions efficiently with less effort, emotional balance, being independent and great belief in oneself. Of course there are plenty of other qualities as well but the above should give one a rough idea of the qualities required.

Priorities of a coach and player:

As a player we have different priorities and when we are a trainer the priorities change as it should.  Getting good result is the most important factor that keeps us going for more as a player, but as a trainer we should focus on the qualities and the character of a player more than the results itself. This is not to say that result is not important – it is very much. But overall growth is more important.

Role as a parent:

Going back to the prize distribution ceremony in the World youth Championship, I felt the role as a parent more. I very much wished my daughter Varsha (4 year old) to be on stage and receive the World champion title with the National anthem playing in the back ground. This is something I could not achieve myself as a player and probably this made me think this way.

My wife Aarthie who was also present there felt the same way. We have discussed many times whether it is proper to teach our daughter Chess at this tender age. Every time we feel it is the correct decision. Time will tell whether we are correct or not.

Now going to the next topic:

Teaching Chess to my daughter – part 2 :

Varsha with her trainer Ganesh

We (me and my wife Aarthie) have this great desire – to make a champion out of our daughter in Chess. I understand some may feel uncomfortable with this idea. Is it right to impose on a child our own desires? My reasoning goes something like this…

Chess has taught me many valuable lessons in my life which I would not have learnt otherwise. It has made me a better person (I hope J), given me some of the best and worst moments of my life. I want to provide the same opportunity to my daughter too and to teach her the things which I have learnt from my own experience. I feel chess is a good medium to learn about life the proper way.

Today I told my daughter stories about Mahatma Gandhi. I hope she learnt some useful things from this. Gandhi has been my role model since I was young. I am deeply impressed at his courage, honesty, truthfulness and tremendous self belief despite all odds. I have tried to model myself on his way of life but I know I am trying to achieve the impossible. I am not half as good as him. But still it is worth trying to be like someone so good.

For some time now, Varsha is learning chess from her first coach Ganesh (refer part 1 on this topic). I asked Varsha today what she has learnt so far. She said she has learnt about the concept of pin, supporting pieces, movement of pieces, etc…

Varsha is learning the chess basics now but I can see clearly she is not able to focus on the game for more than few minutes. I hope this is a common phenomenon. Though I am a little worried about this sometimes, I am sure things will improve as time passes.

Currently Varsha is having 3 classes a week with each class for 45 minutes duration. She spends this time mainly talking to Ganesh about her school or some other things. Though I don’t want to push her too much I am thinking a lot about how to improve her span of concentration. Probably I should start teaching her few things myself or let her just play more and get her interested. Maybe she likes to play more than to listen.

She already says she wants to be a Grand Master and World Champion not really knowing what it means to get there. I hope to teach her that.

In the beginning I want my daughter to learn about technical things from Ganesh and I would focus just on teaching her good, champion qualities. I want her to be a tough person who can handle things on her own and be a good person above all else. This is my dream.

Well now it is time to talk about the World youth Championship at Antalya, Turkey.  This is a big event for all the aspiring Indian chess players who want to make a name for them in the World scene. In the last year edition at Vietnam, India bagged 4 World titles in Padmini Rout, Adhiban Baskaran, Sayantan Das and Vidit Santosh Gujarathi. This year all of them are playing in higher category with more new faces joining them.

Lack of Chinese opposition in age category events gives Indian kids better chance at the title. It is a curious phenomenon with the Chinese generally showing lack of interest in winning age category titles despite a pool of talent at disposal.

Last year at Vietnam I had come as personal coach for IM Srinath and this year I am part of the 4 member (me, my wife WGM Aarthie Ramaswamy, IM Murugan and IM DV Prasad) coach team to help our kids in their preparation for the games.

The Indian team arrived in 2 batches one from Mumbai and one from Delhi. The travel took almost a day which included 3 flights (Chennai-Delhi, Delhi – Istanbul and Istanbul-Antalya) and a bus journey from Antalya airport to the venue which took 2 hours. Add to this an hour’s wait at the Hotel before we were allotted our rooms and you get the picture.

To add excitement to our journey one of the parent had lost her and her child’s boarding pass (Istanbul- Antalya sector) and had taken as a self compliment the Knife from the cutlery provided in the flight which gave us a hard time in the security check! And yours sincerely had an upset stomach and vomiting to add to the fun. Priyadarshan contributed his part to this by adding two bagful of vomit in the flight. Whack!

The main complaints being the lack of seating arrangements for the parents/coaches/guardians who have to wait standing outside the playing hall with practically no shelter. With rain promising to come any moment, things don’t look too good for us. The securities have been instructed to not allow anyone except players inside the playing arena and that left many coaches, delegates fuming. Later in the day those with visitors pass were allowed inside the playing hall. To add to this there is no toilet facility for the parents who have to wait in the cold for hours  together!

This is the entrance to the tournament hall. Imagine 2000 people need to go inside through this in “zero tolerance era”

The playing hall is so cramped it is practically impossible to move around even for the players. The hotel rooms don’t have Wi-Fi and the players have to go to the lobby for internet and that too for payment. I guess it should be lucrative to organise such events if one is not too bothered about providing basic comforts. The food and the rooms are pretty decent.

The cramped tournament hall view

Ashwini and Pon N Krithika browsing on the net at the Hotel Lobby

Antalya is a beautiful coastal city with mountains on the other side just like in Halong Bay, Vietnam where I was just a few days back as coach for the Indian team for the Asian Indoor games.

Mountain view

The walk from the hotel to the venue and back is exciting with plenty of shopping prospects along the roadside shops. November being off season there are practically no tourists to this place at this time of the year. So we are a welcome presence and the shop keepers offer good discounts on all products.

Good place for shopping

Me and Murugan went for a short walk during the 1^st round and learnt that Turkish people have their own superstition in the evil eye concept similar to the drishti concept in India. And that Jewellery shops here sell products made at Jaipur, India!

In the first round Shreyans Daklia scored a fine win over a Grand Master while National Under 17 Champion Saranya lost to an unrated player due to a terrible oversight allowing mate in one in the girls section. Otherwise the results were as expected with the top seeded Indians having their way in most of the games.

National age category champion Saranya who had a bad start with a first round loss

Day two:

We went for a short walk early in the morning in the beach which was exhilarating. I will be attending a FIDE trainer’s course from today and hope to learn about training young children.

Among the Indian kids the one who has grabbed the attention of all is Arpita Mukherjee from Kolkatta. She is 8 years old and has come alone for the trip without her parents! Being cheerful at all times she is everywhere at the same time. Her English (if you can call it that J ) is very cute and she has the habit of waking up everyone in our floor early in the morning and ask for Ramesh sir room! She finds it hard to remember the room numbers as they are 4 digits.

Normal Arpitha

AB(OVE) normal Arpitha J

Myself and Murugan attended the FIDE trainer course which began today. It was interesting but we hope the best is yet to come.  While the tournament has just started (2 rounds complete) some girls are having a tough time with results already and feeling the pressure. Last year National Under 15 champion Bharathi is having the worst start with 2 losses. Another talented young girl from Chennai Ashwini too has managed to score only half a point from 2 games. We went for a walk by the beach and discussed these issues and tried to motivate them to come out of this bad form and get more focus into the game. They looked cheerful after this talk and I hope something positive comes out of this.

In the FIDE trainer meet, some coaches from Turkey came to me and said Indian players have good positional base unlike the European children. I was surprised myself at the observation as I was having a different opinion. I feel Indian kids are good in tactics and need to work more on improving positional sense.

The FIDE trainer course is taking up most of the time. We are learning new things about chess training and I am eager to implement them at Chess Gurukul academy on my return to Chennai.

Mrunal was there doing her routine pre-game tasks, clicking a few snaps and wishing the players before the game while trying to cover up all her anxiety about the final game with her big smile. She had never missed the beginning of a single game through out the tournament and there she was when it mattered the most giving her players the moral support that they needed.

As the games began the first thing that struck me was that both the Indian players Soumya and Kiran had managed to get the same position on the board. While this was not quite unexpected, it was also not what my expert ‘hunch’ had told me the previous day as you have seen in my previous blog. Kiran and Yildiz were going faster while Soumya and Kubra were following suit to reach the following middle game position.

This position is reasonably popular in the Anti-Marshall system and Soumya had picked 10.Nbd2 here as we studied a game in this tournament where Yildiz was convincingly beaten by the Chinese GM Zhang Xiaowen and we were impressed with the proceedings. The first deviation came in Kiran’ board as Yildiz chose 10…Nbd7, a move that she had not played often in the database, we had focused more in 10…Na5, however we did work on this move too. After 11.c3 Nc5, to my surprise Kiran played 12.Bc2, a move that we had actually discarded the previous day, not that it was bad for white, but we felt it was not giving any advantage for white. We had seen 12.axb5 as an option. For a second, I was wondering if Kiran had seen something else later that night or in the morning, but then I dismissed that idea and understood that she had just forgotten the exact moves we had seen since this was not the main choice we had prepared. At this point Nigel Short was standing right next to me and I mentioned to him about how Kiran had played a different move and he mentioned that he recalled a blitz game he had played against Anand in that position as Black. My immediate question was about the result and he said he won with black, that was not good news at all for me! Though this was not a fatal blow, I started getting nervous as a win for Yildiz would clinch the issue for her leaving Soumya with no chance for a gold medal irrespective of her result against Kubra.

At this point Kiran’s board started to slow down and Soumya’s board started to catch up. It was almost ten minutes and I was not allowed to stand inside the playing area anymore, but the worst part was from the spectator area I was only able to see Kiran’s game clearly but not Soumya’s. Given that we had studied the position back home, I was able to make out the moves in Soumya’s game from a distance by some reasonable guess work.

So there it was the position that we had actually considered seriously had occurred on Soumya’s board. I was extremely delighted but at the same time scared. I felt the Turkey team would have definitely taken a look at that position since Yildiz had already taken a beating from Zhang as mentioned earlier.

Keeping my fingers crossed and walking across the spectator’s area I suddenly noticed the first deviation in Soumya’s game from Kubra. 15…Bf8, 15…Qd7 was played by Yildiz against Zhang and Zhang managed to get a good position after 16.Nh4. I tried to recollect what exactly we had seen against the Bf8 move, but could not manage to refresh my memory. I started getting nervous again, but then I told myself “The things I manage to forget, no one else in this world would!, I am quite abnormal when it comes to memory and so there was nothing to worry about the situation”. I am not sure if it was the pressure or the fatigue that made me forget that simple idea, but the truth is I actually did forget it!. Soumya obviously was not the one to forget her home work for this crucial game. She took about 10 minutes to make her move 16.axb5 and after seeing the move it all started coming back to me. White was threatening to win a pawn with a simple double attack after 16…axb5 17.Qb3 and black has not defended against the threat. In fact it was the our good friend Rybka who made us realize this threat existed when Adhiban suggested 15…Rb8 the previous night. Soumya promptly decided to accept the pawn sacrifice that was offered by her opponent given that we had analyzed taking the pawn against 15…Rb8, this was bound to work as well. Things were not clear from outside as I could not find any clear compensation for the sacrificed pawn for black, but Kubra continued to show a lot of confidence both in her body language and the clock.

By now Kiran had managed to get a very comfortable position against Yildiz. Kiran was also boozing with confidence in her mannerism during her game. Though she was terribly sick when she was playing, her body language managed to deceive her opponent quite well. Yildiz started utilizing more time on her clock and eventually giving white a comfortable middle game position to play.

Soumya now was about 10 to 15 minutes low on time but had already captured the sacrificed pawn. As I was walking back and forth worried about Kubra’s continuation hoping that it was not one of those pawn sacrifices that she had prepared at home with the help of the computer and her coach, suddenly something struck me near Soumya’s board. I saw Vishnu trying to move away from her board with a laughter that he could almost not control. For a brief moment there I was not able to follow what was happening on her board, then I slowly manged to push the rope tied to restrain the spectator’s from the players as much as possible and lean into the playing area to take a glimpse at Soumya’s board. I just could not believe my eyes, her opponent had actually not prepared the pawn sacrifice well, instead she had miscalculated a variation and ended up going two pawns down! To me this looked too easy, I came running to Mrunal explaining that Soumya had a clearly winning position and I could see her face light up with an electrifying glow!

Later on our journey back home, I had just popped a simple question for the team about the most memorable thing that each player took away from this trip. Vishnu’s answer was “Seeing Soumya play Bxf7 check winning the second pawn and essentially sealing the game and the tournament!!!”

While we were totally overwhelmed at the scene, it took only a few more minutes for Kiran to sign off a peace treaty with Yildiz. This move was definitely risking Yildiz’s gold medal chances, but I guess she felt her position was not that convincing to pursue for a win and to some extent she may have been intimidated by Kiran’s positive body language. But what this told us was that if Soumya managed to win from her two pawn up position, then she is guaranteed of a gold medal!!! For some reason I was not happy the way things were proceeding. Soumya had a completely winning position, but all I see is that her opponent is walking around comfortably and making her moves quite easily while Soumya was sinking into deep thought pretty much after every move.

In the mean time Karthikyean had brought down the Indian nemesis FM Bajarani Ulvi from Azerbaijan in a quick game. Bajarani had scored 2.3/3 against Adhiban, Ashwin and Lalith Babu while Lalith was the only one to manage a draw. After talking to Karthikeyan about his game which he won quite comfortably in King’s Indian Samisch from the white side, I asked him to check on the time situation for Soumya. To my dismay he came and informed me that Soumya was left with 12 minutes while her opponent had 40 odd minutes. This time advantage however did not help Kubra as much, as she had to eventually accept the inevitable and resigned after a three hour battle.

The funny part here was that Soumya had not realized that she won the gold as she was unaware of Yildiz’s result. She turned back and noticed that Kiran’s game was done and also noticed that the White King and the Black King were placed in e4 and e5 squares respectively indicating the drawn result of that board. Now we could catch a tiny glimpse of smile on her face as she turned up and looked at Me and Mrunal confirming her tittle and we promptly nodded confirming the feat she had achieved.

Soumya came down running and literally jumped over Mrunal hugging her. She started jumping and yelling as we left the hall. Everyone in the tournament hall had turned around hearing the noise, but you know what? she did not care!!!! It was her first world championship tittle and I would not blame her if she did not care!

It was time to celebrate and that is exactly what we did! I think most of the team would not disagree if I said I went crazy for the rest of the day! Trying to touch a 10 foot ceiling did not help my existing Sheen Splint condition. Dropping my iPhone in the water, swimming bare chested in the bone chilling ocean were some of the other things that may need a mention. Karthikeyan and Vishnu shared the swimming in ice cold ocean experience with me and rightfully also shared the consequential sick flight journey back home! The Indian team had a chance to meet with Miguel Najdorf’s grandson who was filming a documentary about this tournament. He decided to take a few shots of the Indian team and as he rightly quoted at the end “I was here for four days and these are the best shots I have got, you guys are crazy!”

Our return journey was very different compared to the onward one. Surprisingly the South African crew had become extremely friendly. Maybe it had to do with the fact that we were carrying three huge trophies with us! As we walked past each gate and each check point, we were bragging about the World Junior Champion traveling with us. A customs officer in Mumbai walked up to me and said “You are the winning Indian team, you guys should not be standing in line, you make us proud, walk right by” it did feel good. Accomplishing something feels good, but getting acknowledged for it is even better!

Whether it was the way Lalith’s face lights up when he says “I am going to get an ice cream anna” or Shyam’s profound philosophical questions in English or the 420’s (Ashwin, Vishnu and Karthikeyan) constantly bullying the 412’s (Adhiban, Shyam, Lalith) or Mrunal’s slow motion speeches and of course Soumya and Ashwin’s funniest yet purest form of Tamil, it has all given nothing but happy memories. Nothing in this blog has been exaggerated or added to make it more dramatic, these experiences are purely how I recall from my faint memory.

Cheers to team India!!!! It was a totally rocking new experience for me, and to have contributed in some form to India and the junior chess team makes me quite happy.

I was feeling terrible and I could easily understand the impact it would have on the player itself. Soumya was understandably devastated as she looked at me and walked past me to her room. Mrunal followed her to console her and keep her upbeat. As I was still there in the tournament hall watching and waiting for the the other players to finish, surprisingly I saw Soumya come back around 9 pm, about 15 minutes after she had left. I took her out of the playing hall and started talking to her. She could not bear the fact that none of her opponents had played extraordinary games to defeat her but she herself had thrown it away. I began explaining to her that we unfortunately did not have enough time to worry about what went wrong in the past two rounds as the next game was at 10 am the next morning and she still had very good chances for a gold medal. Mourning is definitely not an option for a professional player in between a tournament. Failure is one thing, but not giving your best shot since you are not up to it is another thing. Letting things go is not a sign of an extraordinary player and only extraordinary players win World Junior Championships! I used this on all the players to motivate them to play their last game with all the seriousness that they had for their first. Like I said, letting even one game go is not a sign of a professional.

People take inspiration from variety of things, and my blog readers would already know that I take a lot of inspiration from movies. I decided to talk to Soumya about this scene in the movie Remember the Titans which is based on a true story where Denzel Washington plays the role of Herman Boone, a high school football coach. In that movie the coach gives a pep talk to his boys before the beginning of the season as the players find it hard to cope up with the race mixing back in the 70’s. All those football and movie fans would know what I am talking about here, for those who do not know the dialogue, this is how it goes,

“ The Greek mythology says that the Titans were even more stronger than the gods. They ruled their universe with absolute power. Now, that football field is your universe and you guys get out there and rule it like the titans”

Now I had to change some words to match the chess situation here, so instead of the football field I used “those 64 squares”. Surprisingly this did have some effect on Soumya. After she had won her game and the title, she mentioned that this dialogue had inspired her a lot and also specifically asked me to mention it in the blog.

Despite my fantastic memory with which I forget just about every second thing that happens in my life, the night of 2^nd November 2009 would be a hard thing to forget. After trying to pep Soumya up for the next game I went into the dinner hall with some of the other team members. Mrunal was found missing in the dinner hall and the reason for which I found out later. To the team’s delight we were happy to see Soumya totally “elighted”. Yes, elighted is exactly the word that came to my mind, for someone else to miss a cake walk lead and fight back from behind would have been impossible, but this girl showed that her nerves were made of steel. As I was quietly wondering within myself if I had actually done my job that I was sent 8000 miles across to do, my father’s wise words came to my mind, “One can force a horse and take it to the puddle of water, but cannot force it to actually drink the water, deciding to drink that water remains as a choice, only for the horse”. I guess the thirst for this Indian horse was ready to overcome all the hurdles and just like that she was back in business!

Unfortunately Mrunal had taken things more to heart than Soumya herself. She had skipped her dinner and was feeling quiet depressed after the penultimate round blow for India. I was very glad to see her so involved with the tournament and the players, but at the same time I did not want her to show any signs of sorrow in front of the players. Mrunal herself was very much aware of this and she tried not to show her disappointment in front of Soumya. After a brief chat with her, similar to the one I had with Soumya, I believe she felt a little more comfortable. My mind was filled with all kinds of thoughts regarding the situation, but I was happy I was able to generate some positive thoughts into most of my team members.

After all the talk, it was time to get down to work. Around 10.30 pm that night 7 of the 11 member playing squad for India were in my room trying to help the tittle aspirant. I was pleasantly surprised and also extremely proud of the way this team worked that night. Though the rest of the players did not have much to play for in the last round, it was their time and their effort that made India proud in the end. Before I knew it, this well knit band of youngsters had started their work in full throttle.

Basically we had an India Vs Turkey match happening the final day. The Turkish beauty Yildiz Betul Cemre was leading the tournament with 9 points, half a point ahead of Soumya and Cori Tello and she was facing Kiran with black pieces while Soumya had white pieces against Ozturk Kubra. As Morphius rightly quotes to Neo in The Matrix “Fate it seems, has its own sense of irony”, Soumya had lost to Kubra in the last round from a seemingly better position costing her the bronze medal in the previous edition of the World Juniors in 2008. After finding out this pairing, in the process of making her BELIEVE, which was running through my mind all night, I told her that all good things in life come with a prize, if you do not feel the pain that it takes to succeed, success itself would not feel so great! Time for a sweet revenge had come…

Getting back to the game, we did some research to find out that both the Turkish players were playing the same opening mainly, but they also had some other options which they played infrequently. So the first question that came to our mind was should we prepare the same opening for both the Indian players and have the risk of having the same position occur in both the boards. The main risk being if there was some flaw in our preparation or if they had out prepared us, then we run the risk of going down on both boards. But eventually we thought about it and we decided that it was better to prepare one variation thoroughly and try to go indepth with it. I had a hunch here that Soumya would face the Caro Kann defense while Kiran might face the Archangel variation of the Ruy Lopez, both played infrequently by their opponents.

At this point I have to explain the term “Coach’s Hunch” as it was popularly called by the players of the Indian squad. Right from the beginning when a player came to me and asked me about their opponents on what I thought they would play, I came up with suggestions that never actually occurred on board. This started for the first time when I suggested Vishnu that I had a strong hunch that his opponent would play 1.d4. He asked me a couple of times for assurance and I repeated my suggestion. As the games started that day and as usual outsiders are allowed to watch the games from inside the playing area for the first 10 minutes, I noticed that a Najdorf position had occurred in Vishnu’s board! I could not help laugh looking at it as that meant that his opponent had played 1.e4 exactly opposite of what I had suggested. Though it felt sad that my hunches were not coming through it felt equally funny when players started making fun of my hunches by saying that they will prepare exactly opposite of what I suggest them! This time I was not so outspoken about my hunch as I had seen the disastrous results from the previous rounds. Thank god, I did not stress on my hunch as it turned out to be wrong again.

Adhiban, Vishnu and Ashwin all possessing very good opening knowledge were of great help for Soumya. Not only did they know the latest and popular opening choices, they were able to just name most of the model games for the openings we needed to study from the back of their minds. It was already past midnight and we were trying to wrap things as early as possible since a good sleep is also one of the most important things required to perform well over the board. At 1.30 pm we had pretty much looked at all variations that we thought were probable and studied a good response for all of them. We decided to call it quits for the day and all the players returned back to their room to catch some sleep.

Most of you by now know the final result of the tournament, I will continue to explain the process that lead us to achieve it in my next blog as this one is quiet lengthy already! The final nervous moments and the celebration after to be continued….

Soumya Swaminathan, a very studious and hard working girl from Pune is having a wonderful tournament here. After her third round defeat against Yilduz Betul from Turkey, it has been no looking back for this young girl with a big smile. With her thorough opening preparation and positional understanding she has outclassed all her rivals here, but however the tournament is not yet over and we are sitting here with our fingers crossed as we watch the 11^th round games that just got underway.

When the game is on, it is all about focus, focus and more focus for Soumya. In more than one occasion she did not even know what opening was played in the next board!

Kiran Manisha Mohanty is trailing Soumya with 6.5 points and maintains very good chances for a medal. Padmini Rout, the charm of the whole team here suffered 3 straight losses to fall back from the sole lead which she held after round 6. The top seed Mary An Gomes has still not been able to find her ground as she hangs around with 5 points and Harini Sankaran had a few missed opportunities to stand at 4.5 points.

Padmini the charm with the dedicated Indiam Women’s team Coach Mrunalini. Mrunal as she is called by the players here has been sitting through the whole 5 hrs each game in the tournament hall even though the organizers do not allow non players to enter the playing area. It is difficult to see all the games from outside.

Before I go on with the performance and the results of our other players, let me talk about the general things that we have been upto here. After 7 rounds we had the first rest day. Padmini along with her parents and Kiran decided to take a day long excursion to check out the whales, sea lions, penguins and what not. For the rest of the team the whole day tour felt a little too tiring. So we decided to take a two hour whale watching tour in the morning. Well, it was our lucky day! we got to see the tiny fins of the whales from about 200 meters distance The worst part was that we found out the next day that there were Scuba diving places around the area that offered one day activities! Anyways after a whole morning of whale fin watching, we returned back to the hotel just to sit back and relax the rest of the day without moving an inch out of the hotel. For a brief moment I thought I could get the Indian team to play Soccer that was arranged by the tournament organizers. Boy! What was I thinking? Like Russel Peters (A Canadian born Indian stand up comedian) says in one of his speech about how Indian’s would make bad slaves, “Do I look like physically ready to do hard labor? Give us a calculator we will do your taxes man!” Check this speech out, it is pretty funny,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eyXdca-K7U

While some of us enjoyed watching Al Pacino as Micheal Corleone in the Godfather the rest prepared for their next game in leasure, but none of us were in that soccer field for sure!(That includes me too!)

Getting back to the performances of our boys team. The best performing player here is Lalith Babu who has 5.5 points with 2 defeats and a rating performance of 2507, 30 points more than his actual rating. This pretty much explains the performance of the boys team, it has been a disaster. While Adhiban stands second in the list with a 2440 performance, Karthikeyan, Ashwin, Shyam and Vishnu are all struggling with a performance about 100 points below their current rating. Well there is nothing wrong about losing and I know personally that these boys are putting their heart and soul to get out of this difficult patch.

Indian boys lined up… We all only wish those board numbers started from 1 rather than 13

What do you tell someone when they are really depressed? You can tell them it will get better, but that is just obvious; you can tell them that you understand their pain; but that sounds unreal at times; you can say life sucks, but that is way too pessimistic for an Indian team coach to say. The second option does work for me here as the players very well understand that I have been through a lot more disappointments in my 19 year chess career to understand their pain. But the real question is how to make them be more positive. When things go bad it is natural to just let it go, but that is the last thing you want to do in a World Junior Championship with most of the players playing in their last year.

It was great for our players one day to get some really good advice from Nigel Short over breakfast. I would like to share that with our readers here as it is a great opportunity to get tips from a player with such vast experience as Short. He said that one should not go down the road of self pity at difficult times as there would be no coming back. One should not try to feel sorry for themselves for their difficult or unfortunate defeats and instead should try to work quick fixes to repair the damage. “Damage Control” when things are not going your way is an important thing to learn.

All said and done, this has been a wonderful experience for us as a team. As I am finishing up this blog, the 11^th round is done and we have had a good day. Soumya drew a completely winning game, but still maintains a healthy ½ a point lead. Kiran has increased her chances for a medal with a win to move up to 7.5 points. Ashwin Jeyaram suffered the only loss after he over pushed a drawn endgame. So with two more rounds to go, plenty of excitement to come….

Hi Friends!

I have been appointed as coach for the Indian Chess team for the Asian Games 2009 to be held at Ha Long Bay, Vietnam from 31^st October till 7^th November.

Cooling down with an icecream at Delhi  airport before departure

I am happy to be among my chess friends after a yearlong gap since I have stopped being an active player to focus more on training youngsters. I was also eager to observe strong players in action from a coach’s perspective to find out how they take decisions, handle pressure, time and well themselves under all circumstances.

The Indian Men team comprises of GM Harikrishna Pentyala, GM Krishnan Sasikiran, GM Parimarjan Negi, GM elect Laxman, and IM Deep Sen Gupta. Women team members are IM Dronavalli Harika, IM Tania Sachdev, WGM Nisha Mohota, WGM Kruttika Nadig, and WGM Eesha Karavade.

I expect the tournament to be a tough one, the Chinese being our main rivals in both sections.

The tournament will be played in 3 sections:

1. Team Blitz  ( each team can have 2 men players with a reserve and 2 women players with a reserve)
2. Individual Rapid (each team can field 2 men and 2 women players)
3. Team Rapid (each team can have 2 men players with a reserve and 2 women players with a reserve)

29/10/2009  The air travel from Delhi to Singapore by Air India went without a hitch, as everyone was either sleeping or trying to do something similarly productive. At Singapore airport, we all rushed to the Singapore airlines counter to collect our boarding passes for the Singapore- Hanoi sector and we hardly had an hour between the fights. At this point we realised Harikrishna had left his mobile phone in the Air India flight! He lodged a complaint with airport authorities and was duly informed that, if found, his mobile phone will be sent to his address. We boarded the flight with few minutes to spare.

Singapore – Hanoi travel was more pleasant with good movies on board the flight and I watched “Land of the lost”. It was quite funny and I enjoyed it very much. The reception at Hanoi airport was pleasant and we were taken in a bus to Ha long Bay which is the venue for the Chess part of Asian Games – a 3 hour drive which took 5 hours in fact.

Indian Team members at Hanoi airport on arrival

Sasikiran, I, Nisha and Deep played cards on the bus with the luggage’s all around us. There was a short break along the way for refreshments.  We ordered hot coffee and Tea with milk. What we got in return needs to be explained to be understood. Those if us who ordered Tea got HOT tea without milk WITH ICE! And for those who ordered Coffee they got something similar HOT tea with ICE!

Upon our arrival at Hanoi we were given Rooms without too many formalities. Though the rooms were not as big as one would have hoped for, they are quite pleasant. I am staying with Laxman who spends most of his time either preparing too fast for me to understand head or tail or ask awkward questions.

With no internet in the Room and fewer English channels on TV, time is a commodity at my full disposal for now.

Great view from the room- Beach on the one side

Mountains on the other:)

30/10/2009

The teams have started arriving from other countries and I could see more and more Grand Masters and familiar faces at the Hotel lobby. Everyone is curious about food and I guess many are more happy than unhappy.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a team from Iraq and Afghanistan participating.

1^st November 2009

The first event which is the Team Blitz got over today. What an event it was! There were many ups and downs and ultimately we could finish only 3^rd in the overall standings starting as the 2^nd seed.

Each team was represented by 2 men and 2 women with a reserve player each. Indian men team was Sasikiran, Harikrishna and Laxman. The women team was Tania Sachdev, Harika and Eesha Karavade.

We started off reasonably  well in the first round with a win over Qatar thanks to a draw by Laxman with Al Sayed on the 2^nd board, Al Modhiaki and Hari Krishna making a draw on the top board, and Eesha and Harika scoring wins  to give us a 3.0/1.0 win.India versus Qatar

Though I don’t remember the exact order of the rounds we played as the schedule was too quick to remember clearly, the highlights were: Among the Indian men Laxman played well to score 3.5 out of 5 rounds. His win over Khamrakulov was noteworthy. He scored 2 more wins over Nepal and Jordan with a loss to Antonio Rogelio of Philippines.

elated Laxman !

Among women, Eesha and Harika played too well carrying us through to the semi final with timely wins. Unfortunately for us our top guns found the going tough. Sasikiran and Harikrishna were getting into time troubles too often and the form not being quite right, suffered many losses at periodic intervals. Tania also found the going tough with couple of losses in the middle.

In the 9^th round we needed to beat Nepal 4-0 and Iran had to beat Philippines by exactly 2.5-1.5 for us to qualify and also finish 3^rd to avoid playing China in the semi finals. Luckily for us this is what happened and we got through to the Semis by blanking out Nepal.A view of the tournament hall

After hectic schedule of nine rounds without break the players were very tired and we all reached the hotel eager to catch some rest before the semis against Vietnam. Since our women team was doing extremely well we were banking on them to carry us to the finals and it looked like that was going to happen.

In the first round Eesha won comfortably and Harika was 2 pawns up in her game. But under pressure she could manage only a draw. Hari drew and Sasikiran lost to tie the match at 2-2. At one point it looked like we would win 3-1 easily.

In the 2^nd semi final match, Harika won an exchange quite in the beginning of the game and Eesha got a comfortable advantage with white pieces. It again looked like the girls will win both the games but it wasn’t to be. Both lost their games due to some blunders and Harikrishna who was having a slight advantage in an endgame blundered as well to make it 0.5-3.5 for us and we were out of the event with a bronze.

Iran lost to China in the other semi finals. So it was local Vietnam and China in the finals. Vietnam beat China convincingly to win the event. They fully deserved the wins as they beat most of the top teams including the top 2 seeds.

Standing upto fans expectations is not an easy task and that is precisely the reason why the above mentioned people are a little above us, the ordinary mortals! When I set foot in Argentina 5 days ago, I knew that bagging 2 golds and 1 silver medal out of possible 6 medals was close to an impossible task. Even today for those people who witnessed that unbelievable scene last year when India won 3 medals in the World Juniors is like a dream. India had created a record in the history of chess by winning both the boys and girls tittle in the same year in Turkey. The champion last year and a good friend of mine Abhijeet Gupta has a little less than a fortnight to cherish his tittle as it is being eyed by some extremely strong youngsters here already. This year the Indian Contingent is not as strong as last year, but we have a lot of potential in these youngsters. With their gaining experience sky is their limit.

No wonder the immigration officer in Mumbai interrogated Shyam Sundar for more than 15 mins in Mumbai airport and asked him to sing the national anthem!!!

The only mild hitch in our otherwise wonderful outing here is the food! For those vegetarians in he team like me, Vishnu, Lalith, Shyam and the women’s team coach Mrunalini, it has been nothing but a nightmare. My typical lunch has been a couple of glasses of soda with a bread and a small serving of pasta where I hand pick the meat out of the food myself. Dinner is similar, just minus the pasta! There is nothing wrong with the food that has been provided here, its just the limited choice we have that is making us starve. In fact the quality of their food seems evident with our team’s star diner, Ashwin! Good for him as he seems to be enjoying himself with the food provided here! One of the best qualities of a sportsman is to be able to survive under varying food, weather and traditional conditions.

End of Round 5

It has not been a great outing so far for the Indian team here in Argentina. In the girls section, the top seed, Mary Ann Gomes has been struggling with her form with a couple of loses against lower rated opponents. Our current hope being the young and vibrant Padmini Rout (4 points) fighting it out for the top spot today against the Chinese WGM Zhang Xiaowen (4.5 points).. Sowmya and Kiran with 3 points each and Harini with 2.5 are having an average tournament so far.

In the boys section Adibhan started off well with a creditable draw against the top seeded Vachier Lagrave Maxime in the second round. But it was too much even for the world under 16 champion to play the first and the second seed the same day as Adibhan went down fighting against Andreikin Dmitry on the third round. Lalith Babu who is having a good tournament was unbeaten until, round 4 against a very strong opposition. He had a creditable draws against David Howell and Andreikin Dmitry. Lalith suffered his first loss in the fifth round against the Chinese GM Li Chao. Karthikeyan and Shyam have 3 points each, Vishnu and Adibhan with 2.5 points.

We still are having a good time and enjoying ourselves out here. With the wind blowing at 35 kmph speed at our faces, to keep ourselves rooted to the ground seemed like a fun task in itself!

Yeah, the performance of our players are about average, but the good news is that there are 8 more rounds to go! And the fighters that these kids are I am sure they will bounce back within no time. The cruel part about chess just like life is that when things go wrong, you really do not know why they went wrong, or for the matter of fact, when things go right, you still do not know why they went right???? I am here hoping to help these players figure things out and hopefully for those who are playing good, keep up whatever thats making things work and for those who are struggling, to improve on whatever thats bothering them.

You can find out more about the tournament results in

Boys

http://www.chess-results.com/tnr26636.aspx?lan=1

Girls

http://www.chess-results.com/tnr26637.aspx?lan=1

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