Chess Olympiad: We must go with a sense of danger, but also not be pessimistic

It is Chess Olympiad time and I can feel the buzz not only in my home state but everywhere I have traveled during the last month.

To organize such a huge event in such a short span of time, that too in such a short span of time, is unbelievable. All credit goes to the steps taken by the Government of Tamil Nadu and the All India Chess Federation.

It is natural for Indian fans to be excited about the prospects of our teams. In my view, minimizing errors is highly desirable.

I mean, every match that goes awry here or there will put stress on you. It is also part of the general tournament calendar format. But, hopefully, we will have a smooth ride in the sense that even if we have 2.5-1.5 wins, and we have a lot to offer, we are still scoring points.

I am glad that all the fresh faces we have, may be able to win matches so that even an odd loss doesn’t hurt the team. They all push and take a fair amount of risk. So it must have been early. If they’re winning the game, that’s all that matters. I think in most matches, we should go with a sense of danger but not be pessimistic either.

role of mentor

I will be in touch with him as the mentor of the teams. Hopefully, if they have work here or there, they’ll feel free to contact me. However, I have noticed that most people – and this is true for me as well – that when we are there, we have our own preparations, our own notes. And mostly we’re trying to get familiar with this stuff.

So, I don’t expect them to have the energy or time to keep asking people for help. If I help them, they have to absorb all that and so on.

You cannot control what others say. I would advise the players not to dwell on it. But this is a social media generation. So I don’t even know how to tell them not to take all these things. Let me put it this way. I won’t pay attention to people cheering for medals and all because you know that’s what fans do, right? But a player should not think about it, because it will be too early for him. I think if you can ignore it, lower your expectations and not go into this Olympiad thinking it’s great, then actually playing in your country is a huge advantage. If you start to think that you are stronger than you are, and you have to perform much higher than expected, you may end up putting in a lot.

pressure on yourself. So when I’m there, hopefully I’ll remind them. I’ll have to find a way to keep it, but it’s annoying enough that people just say Medal… just Gold. I would find this very disturbing.

Now that it has been confirmed that India will be fielding three teams in both the sections, it adds to the domestic interest. In terms of net strength (in Team B of the open section), the youngsters are quite strong. All I would say is that Team A has more experienced people. In Team A, we know which are the boards that are not going to cause any play and then we have the dangerous guys.

drama is not a bad thing

While there may be a lot of drama in Team B, that’s not a bad thing. I can’t say that what matters is experience in an Olympiad – it could be knowing what the difficult moments are or what to do when your team is underperforming. These experiences shape you, but honestly, you figure it out pretty fast. So I think every day there will be more drama in Team B. Our team in women is A Koneru Humpy, Dronavalli Harika, R. Vaishali is strong with Tania Sachdeva and Bhakti Kulkarni.

The other team has a lot of experience and I saw during the camp (in Chennai) that they were all training very hard. Everyone is very inspired.

Amidst all the rising expectations, I would advise players that mileage may vary. It would bother me a lot if people around are more enthusiastic than just talking about medals etc, which is hopelessly unrealistic at this stage. It’s frustratingly unrealistic, even during tournaments. It is only during the last two or three rounds that we allow ourselves even luxuries.