BENGALURU: RB Ramesh was a very proud man on Wednesday night. An hour before he boarded the flight to Cyprus to see R Vaishali's crowning moment on Thursday, the coach spoke about his longstanding partnership with the new Candidates winner, his thoughts right now and her style of play. Excerpts:
You have coached Vaishali for around the last 15 years. Your first thoughts
Really happy she has won the tournament. There wasn't much time on the clock when she made those two correct, consecutive moves (39. Rd8+ and 40. c4). It was in such a crucial moment of the game as she had to come up with the correct solution.
What does this mean for Vaishali's career?
Everyone's dream would be to become a world champion and she's one step closer to achieving it. For that to happen, you need to go through a qualification process. There is one major challenge before she can get that title. After the initial celebrations are over, you have to (start) planning for that.
There was a point of time in her career when she was frustrated — that final GM norm had eluded her. How would you describe that phase?
There will always be ups and downs in a player's career. Vaishali has had her share of ups and downs. Despite all that, what matters is we keep the journey on and not lose hope in ourselves. Make use of the chances that come our way and she has managed to do that exactly. Really happy and proud about this.
You have seen how her chess has evolved over the years. How would you describe her game?
Generally, she likes to attack. Very inclined to be aggressive. Sometimes, she used to sacrifice a pawn for attack but the attack would not come and she used to lose for such reasons. It was a bit confusing when to sacrifice, when to take risk and when to hold. But these are phases everyone has to go through. Generally, though, she is more aggressively inclined in comparison to, say, Pragg (R Praggnanandhaa).
In the last Candidates in 2024, she had a string of losses followed by a string of wins before finishing in second. What was the message to her?
That was both a good and a bad thing. It was bad she lost four games in a row before winning five in a row. But as a trainer, I will be focusing more on the negatives and trying to overcome those areas. So that was the message and we worked on that.