Latest news with #Shyamsundar
Indian Express
12-07-2025
- Sport
- Indian Express
Meet Harikrishnan A Ra, India's 87th grandmaster
For a man chasing a grandmaster title since 2018, the final two steps were taken in the span of a few days. Harikrishnan A Ra became India's 87th grandmaster after a draw with P. Iniyan in the final game of the La Plagne International Chess Festival in France. After getting his first GM norm a few years ago, the Chennai-based player gained the next two he needed in two tournaments — gaining his second one at Andujar Open in Spain before earning the third in France — to get the highest title the sport has to offer. Harikrishnan smiles as he talks about his 'quite crazy months', as he has played seven tournaments outside India in a row now and will only return home after playing three more. He started this 10-tournament stretch at Dubai in the middle of May, then went to Croatia for a couple of events, before flying to Russia for the Asian League Teams Championship where he helped the Airports Authority of India Team claim bronze. Then there was a pitstop in Spain for another tournament where he earned his second norm, before earning this third norm at La Plagne in France. His travels are far from over: he is already on his way to Spain for another tournament before going to Portugal. While most other players take breaks between foreign trips to refresh themselves and regain mental strength, Harikrishnan prefers to go on a jet-setting tear of 9-10 tournaments at a stretch. 'This method doesn't work for many people. But if I plan to play in just two or three tournaments, usually it's going to be bad. Last year too, I played nine tournaments in a row. After four tournaments, I was not doing well. Then, in the final five, I improved my Elo rating to 2500. So bunching together tournaments usually works for me. For some reason, I get into my flow after four tournaments. This year too, after four tournaments, I got my two norms back-to-back,' Harikrishnan tells The Indian Express. When he earned this third norm on Friday, one of the first calls Harikrishnan made was to his coach, GM Shyamsundar Mohanraj, who runs Chess Thulir in Chennai, and was also responsible for India getting its 86th GM, Srihari LR. Usually, every time Harikrishnan sets off to play in a series of tournaments, he spells out a goal to his coach. It could be 'I'll only return after becoming a grandmaster' or 'I'll return with a 2600 rating'. So now that a seven-year-wait has ended, Shyamsundar wanted to know his ward's plan. He was wondering if Harikrishnan would like to come home. Instead, the 24-year-old mentioned the next three tournaments he was preparing for. 'That made me very proud. He's 24. Other players in his shoes might have felt that they have finally become a GM.'Chalo, ho gaya. Now time for a party.' But not him. In fact, his next event starts in two days,' Shyamsundar told The Indian Express. He paints a portrait of a guy who's completely devoted to his craft, to the point that he swore off social media recently. 'He doesn't have too many distractions. He doesn't get carried away. So if we're doing 10 to 12 camps of his rating level in a year, he used to be there in at least 90 percent of them,' the coach says. Now that the final GM norm is achieved, the two have a new objective for the next three tournaments. 'I told him since you've become a GM, now you should try experimenting a little bit (with playing styles etc) and see how it goes,' said Shyamsundar. Amit Kamath is Assistant Editor at The Indian Express and is based in Mumbai. ... Read More
Indian Express
20-05-2025
- Sport
- Indian Express
Grandmaster Shyamsundar Mohanraj is on a quiet quest to produce more Indian GMs
'I was super desperate to start producing grandmasters for the country,' declares GM Shyamsundar Mohanraj in a soft, yet determined, voice right after guiding Srihari LR on his quest to become a grandmaster. Last week, the Chennai-based Srihari became India's 86th grandmaster, separated from India's 85th by a gap of just over a year. 'It's been a year since India has had a GM. In India we have too many talented players so it's a pity that we have not had a GM for so long. There are so many guys who are within touching distance of the title,' he laments. The grandmaster title is the one of the hardest-earned ones in the sport of 64 squares. It's a recognition of talent and aptitude but has to be earned by earning three norms at three different tournaments and crossing a rating threshold of 2500. Srihari's 10-month-long struggle to get the final grandmaster norm reminded Shyamsundar of his own long wait to get past the finish line. The story goes that back in 2012, he had ticked off all three norms, but his coronation as a grandmaster was held up because he was just 0.2 points away from the 2500 rating. 'I know the pain of the players who struggle so hard to become grandmaster. I was 2499.8 at some point and needed just 0.2 points. It took me six months to get that 0.2 rating. There were times when I was going to play in a tournament and had I withdrawn from that, I would have become a GM because the ratings would have been rounded off to 2500 in the next published rating list. But that's not how I wanted to become a grandmaster. Becoming a grandmaster is just one of the things in chess. I knew I would become a GM anyway. But my goal was not just to become a GM. I wanted to become a GM in a proper way,' Shyamsundar tells The Indian Express. He has brought this never-settle quality in his coaching as well and is hoping to influence his wards. When Srihari became a GM last week, in his post on Instagram wishing the teenager, Shyamsundar reminded him that now the time had come to focus on the next goal. As he explains, these days becoming a grandmaster comes with certain perks and financial opportunities that could sidetrack you and make you ease up on the hunger to forge ahead. He's already mapped out the changes he wants Srihari to bring in his playing style: trying to make him a more universal player, rather than just being a solid player. 'Being solid is good, but it's not enough for anyone to get to the next level,' he says about Srihari. 'I want to make him a universal player, good at dynamics and positional chess. It's tricky, because I want him to lose his ability to grind out results. I want to fine-tune his way of playing.' The other lesson Shyamsundar, who is an Asian Junior Champion and Commonwealth medalist, learnt from his own career was how to deal with the pressure that comes when you're close to the finish line. He admits that the pressure to get the GM title took a toll on him. He had sponsors promising him to invest in him once he became a GM. But that thought of getting the title quickly weighed heavy on his mind. Eventually, when he reached there six months later than he could have, and looked back, there were no sponsors in sight. Eventually, as a GM, there was a phase where he played with no job and no sponsors backing him. Every game won in a tournament would help plot an assault on a tournament in the future. A loss would pinch the pocket. Having experienced these pressures first-hand, he made the conscious decision to take a break from his academy Chess Thulir in Chennai and travel to UAE for three tournaments over a 45-day period — Sharjah and Dubai following the Al Ain event — with a merry gang of six players: two GMs (Bharat Subramaniam and Pranav V) and four IMs (Srihari, Muttaiah, Aswath S and Ilamparthi AR.) All four, he stated, were close to becoming GMs with most of them needing one or two norms. They train hard, but also spend plenty of time playing other sports and cooking in each other's company to take the edge of their professional pursuit. He has gathered a band of talented youngsters who are all on the ascendancy. Aswath S last month won the Grenke Open in Germany despite being seeded 38th after scoring 8/9 and securing his first norm. He also crossed 2500 so he needs just two norms to become GM. Muthaiah AL also has two norms, and needs just 30 rating points and a final GM norm. Ilamparthi has two norms and has crossed 2500 so he's awaiting just one more norm. At the recent event in Al Ain, he took down grandmaster Tabatabaei M Amin, and just when it looked like he could get his final norm too, he faltered. 'Ilamparthi was ill at the end of the tournament so he could not convert winning positions. If he had, India could have had two GMs being confirmed on the same day,' says Shyamsundar. Since the pandemic, the world has looked towards Chennai as the world's fastest churning conveyor belt of grandmasters. From the much-vaunted houses of RB Ramesh, Srinath Narayanan and Vishnu Prasanna have arrived the country's top talent causing seismic tremors in the sport. Gukesh, the youngest world champion in the history of the sport, and Leon Luke Mendonca worked with Vishnu. Ramesh shaped the world-beating sibling duo of Praggnanandhaa and Vaishali besides players like Aravindh Chithambaram and Karthikeyan Murali besides also working with Leon. Srinath moulded players like Arjun Erigaisi and Nihal Sarin. Now, in the form of Shyamsundar comes another grandmaster from India's in-between generation — the group between Viswanathan Anand and the golden gen of Gukesh-Pragg-Arjun — to step up to create more grandmasters.
Indian Express
17-05-2025
- Sport
- Indian Express
Srihari LR, the grinder who became India's 86th grandmaster
About two years ago, a teenager arrived at grandmaster Shyamsundar Mohanraj's house for a routine one-to-one session. But in the span of a few hours, some things about the boy became apparent to Shyamsundar: he was one of the most positive-thinking players he had met, and he was a grinder on the board, looking to fight on even if chess theory suggested that the game was destined to end in a draw. About two years after Shyamsundar became that teenager's full-time coach, that boy, Srihari LR, assured himself the grandmaster title with an incredible performance at the Asian Individual Men's Chess Championship, which ended on Thursday at Al-Ain in the UAE. The Chennai-based Srihari, thus, becomes the country's 86 grandmaster. All top chess players have ingredients that helped them zoom to the top. The biggest attributes that have helped Srihari get to the GM title, his coach says, are his confidence and his ability to draw water from stone by grinding it out on the board until the opponent errs. These attributes were apparent from very early on when they worked together. 'Srihari was quite a confident child when I first met him! And he was also an extremely solid player, who didn't lose very often, even when playing against stronger opposition. So, this was a very good quality. But since then, he's sharpened these things and made it stronger over a period of time,' Shyamsundar told The Indian Express from UAE. 'While he was good in tactics and calculations, I liked his quality of grinding out results. He really can grind something out of nothing against tougher oppositions.' Shyamsundar explained that last month, Srihari was competing in a tournament in Hungary where he was playing a game where a draw seemed a foregone conclusion since there was a rook and four pawns on the board. But Srihari had kept on battling to the point that his opponent had erred and suddenly the Indian had an edge. He also added that Srihari's confidence in his own abilities helps him rarely have any self-doubt during games. And even if there is a defeat, he's not someone who takes them to heart. Getting to the grandmaster title became a bit of a challenge for Srihari: he got his first GM norm at the Qatar Masters in 2023 and the second at the Chennai GM Open in 2024. And while he had crossed the 2500 rating threshold in the published ratings in August 2024, it took him almost 10 months to take the final step. 'It's always tricky to get the final norm for all players. Your need to earn that final norm makes you take certain risks in games even if the tournament situation suggests otherwise. He struggled for nearly 10 months to a year to get his final norm. It was very challenging. He tried playing in many round robin events (to get the final norm over with) but they did not work out well,' said Shyamsundar. After the third norm was achieved, Shyamsundar posted a curious message on his Instagram post while congratulating India's 86th GM. Besides the usual congratulatory message, Shyamsundar added: 'Time to focus on the next bigger goal.' Ask him what he meant by the 'next bigger goal', Shyamsundar said that he wanted to make Srihari a 'more universal player'. His reasoning for this is that after becoming a grandmaster, Srihari will now play much better rated players who are unlikely to make mistakes even if Srihari tries to pressure them by grinding out a result. 'My next bigger goal is to fine-tune his way of playing. I'm trying to focus on the next larger picture: For that, I wanted to change some of his playing style,' Shyamsundar said before elaborating: 'Being solid is good. But only solid is not good enough to reach the next level. So, I have to bring in some dynamic play in him. Slowly, I want to make him a universal player: a player who is good at positional chess. It's a bit tricky and very challenging because in this process, I also want to ensure that he doesn't lose his solid chess, the ability to grind out results. So, it's a bit tricky. But it's not very very difficult either.' Amit Kamath is Assistant Editor at The Indian Express and is based in Mumbai. ... Read More
