Exclusive: Vidit Gujrathi on why chess is a spiritual journey for him

Vidit Gujrathi also spoke about how he handles pressure and more.

Vidit Gujrathi was part of the five-member Indian men’s team that won a historic gold at the 2024 Chess Olympiad. The 30-year-old, who was also part of India’s silver medal winning side at the Hangzhou Asian Games, spoke to Khel Now in an exclusive interaction on the sidelines of the Chennai Chess Grandmasters.

In 2008, Vidit became the first Indian to win the World Youth Chess Championships in the U14 category in 2008. Following this tournament, he completed the norm of becoming an International Master (IM). Two years later, he reached the 2500 FIDE Rating, achieving the first step to become a Grand Master (GM).

Vidit achieved his final Grand Master (GM) norm in 2012 at the Kolkata Open Grandmasters where he finished third, making him the 30th Indian to achieve this feat.

Khel Now had a chance to interact with Vidit who spoke about his issue of handling time pressure and talked about changes that can make chess more spectator friendly. Here are some excerpts from the conversation.

Q) How do you handle pressure, and time during the matches? What are your plans to avoid time trouble?

Vidit Gujrathi: Yeah, it’s one of the things that I’m struggling with right now, and I haven’t figured it out yet, but clearly, I’m more aware of it now due to this current format. So, there are a couple of ways, and I’ll have to either forcefully try to play fast or change my style a bit so that it suits the faster format, but I haven’t figured it out, so I don’t know.

Q) Your career to date has been loaded with tons of ups and downs. How do you handle the emotions of a downfall after a good streak of matches and keep the motivation going?

Vidit Gujrathi: There are times when, let’s say after the candidates, I felt a loss of motivation, but in general, motivation is not much of a problem, dealing with losses or tough times is something that I’m trying to learn. I feel in the process of becoming a better chess player, I’m ending up being a better person and learning more about myself. So it’s kind of a spiritual journey for me.

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Q) Any changes you would like to see in chess rules?

Vidit Gujrathi: There is a possibility to tweak, some of the rules, like if a player has more pieces but it’s a theoretical draw, he should get more than half a point. In general, I think it has to be made more spectator-friendly. That’s the biggest change which is required.

Q) You were asking about a possible app on Twitter. Your views on that?

Vidit Gujrathi: Yeah, it’s not easy to follow chess on the phone nowadays because the apps are a bit cluttered and it’s not seamless to follow all the news, see what the upcoming tournaments are, and who is playing where. It’s very basic if you think of it, but something like this doesn’t exist in the market.

Q) Apart from Chess, how do you like to spend your time? What do you do when you are not playing any tournaments?

Vidit Gujrathi: I have a lot of things that interests me. I like to work out. I brought my guitar here so I’m trying to learn some songs, some music. It’s a bit relaxing for me. I like to read. There’s a pool here which I’m trying to use but there’s no time to do everything.

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