CHENNAI: It’s a title that means a lot to Harika Dronavalli. Her triumph in the women’s section of the FIDE Grand Swiss tournament at Isle of Man not only restored her to the top ten in women’s rankings, but was also a welcome return to form after a string of underwhelming performances. She finished level on 5.5 points with Dinara Saduakassova of Kazakhstan but took home the trophy on tie-break. Her road to victory was as tough as it gets — every player she faced had a FIDE rating higher than 2600. “From day one, I was playing with someone 150 points above me,” says Harika. “Everyone wanted to beat me — it was an important tournament for all of them. So it was very hard. But everything went well and the games I played had quality, so that is satisfactory.”
With every opponent trying to force a win until the very end, some of her matches went beyond seven hours. “I ended up playing at least 3-4 games for more than seven hours,” Harika says. “But we knew that there was going to be that possibility, especially for me, as I tend to play longer games. So I was mentally prepared for it and was trying to be as fit as possible. I tried to get as much sleep as possible, rest my brain and play fresh the next day.
Of course, it was tough but we’re professionals, so we know how to deal with it.” The victory netted Harika 23 rating points and helped her recover a lot of the ground that she had lost over the last year. “That (rating points) is more important for me,” says the 28-year-old. “I was there in the top five in 2016. From 2017 October, whatever I did, things were going wrong.”
Things got so bad that in December 2018, in a tournament in Poland (Memorial of Krystyna Holuj-Radzikowska), she failed to win a single one of the five matches she played. It did not help that this spell came right after she got married (in August 2018). “Just after marriage, I restarted working on chess. I was doing as much as I could,” says Harika. “I felt bad at that point of time, not only because of my performances, but because my in-laws were so supportive and they gave me the opportunity to just concentrate on chess. Somewhere there was the feeling that I was letting them down.”
The tunnel, though wasn’t long, and she saw light soon enough. “From January, I’ve been working non-stop, I’ve been focussing on physical fitness, playing a lot of tournaments. This year, I gained back 48 rating points. So it’s satisfactory that all the hard work is paying off — this one especially because I gained 23 points.”
Harika rejoining the elite of women’s chess comes on the heels of FIDE revamping its structure. After a knockout tournament decided the world champion till 2018, the women’s scene now has a men’s-style Candidates tournament to decide who challenges the title-holder. Harika missed out on the first Candidates in May.
“The cycle was changed without any notice,” says Harika. “We did not have a clue. It was hard — suddenly Candidates happened and none of us were there in that. This time, we have the whole cycle to somehow get into the Candidates. But right now, for me, the most important thing is to become a stronger player. If I become World No 1, by rating, it will be easier for me to get into selections for everything. So my focus is not on how to get into this cycle or Candidates. It is about becoming a stronger player and improving my world ranking to become World No 1. Once I’m stronger, then the other things will come, one by one.”