CHENNAI: ARAVINDH Chithambaram is a pessimist by nature. When he was being driven to the Anna Centenary Library before the opening round of the Chennai Grand Masters last Tuesday, the 25-year-old had only thought running through his mind. Not finish last. Every point — or half a point — he would get would be a bonus. He had zero expectations.
That’s a pretty strange place to be in for somebody who had a rating of 2706. Here was a Super GM (anybody rated above 2700 is one by definition) who had trouble believing in himself. Shortly after 4.00 PM inside the playing hall on Monday, a polite applause broke out. Chithambaram, as lean as a pencil, allowed himself a smile. He had just defeated Levon Aronian twice in a two-game blitz playoff to clinch the second edition.
It completed a huge day in the life of Chithambaram. It’s no wonder why he said ‘today (Monday) is the best day of my chess career’. When the last round began, he still needed a lot of dominoes to fall his way including hoping Arjun Erigaisi wouldn’t get the win over Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.
Once that became clear, Chithambaram, playing with black, still had to beat Parham Maghsoodloo. “I never thought I would be playing the tie-breaker because winning with black wasn’t going to be easy with Parham,” he said. “I didn’t think much about it. I also didn’t put too much of pressure on myself (because of that).”
Thirty minutes later, even as the afterglow of the title remained, he maintained that “either Aronian or Erigaisi deserved it. They played really, they probably had more decisive games than me.”
The tide slowly turned in his favour when he beat Erigaisi on Sunday. “Don’t know what happened but it was a fighting game. The situation demanded me to play for the win but I was first and foremost solid.” In some of these games, Chithambaram had the habit of going to the washroom to look at himself in the mirror, to tell him those moves actually happened. “Playing with these guys itself is an achievement for me... after some of the moves, I do go to the washroom to tell myself that actually happened.”
What worked for him during the entirety of the tournament? He managed to not cede an inch during the opening. It set the platform for either drawn positions in the middlegame and draws (five of his seven matches were draws) or capitalising on a marginally better position into victories like in his last two games against Erigaisi and Maghsoodloo.
He hasn’t yet decided what to do with the winner’s purse (`20 lakh) but the one thing on his agenda is to train himself to believe he can own the stage in competitions like this. “Of course I do that but it’s not as easy.”