Vidit Gujarathi set to make October his own
Wednesday, 1 October 2014 – 5:15am IST | Place: Mumbai | Agency: DNA
Nashik’s chess GM looks forward to winning the world junior championships starting in Pune starting this Sunday
Vidit Gujarathi‘s rise to the top has been prodigious. At 14, when kids are busy gearing up for their final years in school, Gujarathi has become the first Indian to win the World Youth Chess Championship (U-14) in Vietnam. It didn’t stop there. By the time the Nashik resident turned 18, he was India’s 30th Grandmaster.
Gujarathi couldn’t have asked for a better chance to win something in front of his home crowd as the World Junior Chess Championship beginning on October 5 in Pune.
Ranked sixth in the world junior rankings, Gujarathi will spearhead the Indian challenge in the Open category in a tournament what will see more than 125 players from 45 countries taking part. A special feature of this edition will be that both the Open and Women’s section will boast of players featuring in the top hundred in the World and will include six super Grandmasters (Above ELO 2600) apart from Grandmasters and International Masters.
Vladimir Fedoseev (2677) and Alexandra Goryachkina (2430) from Russia are the top seeds in the open and girls categories, respectively.
Home advantage will play a huge rule for Gujarathi but there is something more important that will tell the difference between winning and losing. “It’ll be an amazing feeling to play at home with so many people watching you.
But it’s home food more than home support that is important. We tend to travel abroad for tournaments and we miss our food more than the support. It also becomes a huge problem for those who are vegetarian. Also, there is no issue of jet lag this time. Such small things go a huge way in deciding how well your tournament pans out,” said Gujarathi, who doesn’t eat non-veg on select days of the week.
Gujarathi goes into the competition with a feeling of improving his bronze performance at the previous edition in Kocaeli, Turkey. He is motivated enough to make up for his poor show this August at the Abu Dhabi Masters, where he was joint leader going into the final day only to let this lead slip. “I have learnt a lot in this one year. I need to avoid the mistakes I made in Turkey and see to it that a repeat of the Abu Dhabi performance doesn’t happen again. I don’t have any coach at the moment, so I’m on my own now. I need to be more confident about my opponent’s moves and not be caught unawares.”
The icing on the cake for Gujarathi is the fact that he will turn 20 just four days after the tournament ends on October 24. Will he celebrate it with a gold medal?
“Certainly it’ll be my win here. It’s a prestigious tournament with all the chess greats having won it when they were young. Viswanathan Anand won it in 1987, so I can surely add another name to the list. Plus, October has been a very lucky month for me as I achieved my final Grandmaster norm in October 2012 at the Rose Valley Kolkata Open Grandmasters tournament,” said Gujarathi.
Source: http://www.dnaindia.com
He will win it.
Another prodigy popping up. Nakamura’s world is getting smaller and smaller everyday.