I try to give him as much insights as possible from my own experience so he doesn't hopefully repeat my mistakes."Īrjun is grateful for the learnings so far. We work on openings, calculation, endings and analyse his games. "Arjun and I started working together in September last year and he impressed me with his endless readiness to change and evolve. I felt like I might actually be helpful," Rustam, who was Caruana's coach for six years, says. "After training top guys for more than a decade, coaching a young player, who's really keen to learn, felt good. Arjun is not only strong in calculation, he doesn't doubt himself either."Īrjun also trains with Uzbek GM and Anand's former longtime second, Rustam Kasimdzhanov. In chess, a confident calculator is better than a good calculator. "The ability to spot a line till its final move, get there first and more importantly, be sure that what you've spotted is correct, is crucial. "At the moment, Arjun is the strongest among our young bunch of guys," says former world champion Anand, who mentors the young crop of Indian GMs including Arjun under the umbrella of his WestBridge-Anand Chess Academy. In November, at the Lindores Abbey blitz organized in legendary player Mikhail Tal's memory in Riga, Lativia, Arjun won 13 games out of 18, gained over 107 rating points at 2723 Elo, whizzed into the blitz top 30 crushing Aronian and current world No 4 Fabiano Caruana, and finished in third position. Now I think my style is more universal, more adaptable." "Earlier, I was just a very strong positional player. Arjun's current strengths - superlative calculation and a distinctly well-rounded game that pivots on flexibility pins it all together. He could still do with some more ideas for Black, he believes. His opening repertoire lacked teeth, an aspect he's toiled on with his trainers over the past three years. At the base, that fear stemmed from awareness of glaring weaknesses in his own game. It was also a sure sign that he'd purged a major challenge he'd been grappling with: being intimidated by higher rated players. At the Goldmoney Asian Rapid next, he ended former world No 2 Levon Aronian's 16-game unbeaten streak and turned the spotlight on himself. In May last year he emerged as the surprise winner of the Indian tour to qualify for the elite Champions Chess Tour, run by Carlsen.
He was just not out there at the top of the Google search feeds," Srinath says.Ī keyword that's upturned his fortunes in recent months, Arjun believes, is opportunity - in the form of sufficient tournaments. I'd tell them he's an equally strong player and only a year older but rarely found a positive response. "Earlier, Nihal would often have surplus tournament invites, and I'd try to negotiate with organisers so Arjun could play some of them instead. GM Srinath Narayanan who trains both Nihal Sarin and Arjun had to contend with the polarity. "It felt pretty special."įor all his giddy success, Arjun's still without a sponsor.Ī couple of years older to fellow Indian Gen Z prodigies, Arjun wasn't hustling a youngest-ever Grandmaster (GM) title in his tweens and was relatively unknown. "I asked Magnus if we could take a picture together and he replied 'of course' and congratulated me on my win," Arjun says in disbelief. It cracks when he recounts his favorite fan moment from last week. He's soft spoken, a decibel that can be drowned in an air conditioner's hum. He's also placed No 4 in the world in juniors and earned high praise and a 'soon-to-be 2700 Elo' punt from reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen.Īrjun is back home in Warangal now trying to make sense of all that he's done. He's now the fourth-highest ranked Indian - after Viswanathan Anand, Vidit Gujrathi and Harikrishna Pentala. One of them, a brilliant 10.5/13 finish at Wijk Aan Zee last weekend with a round to spare, had him move up 49 spots in the live classical ratings and break into the top-100 with a 2659.5 Elo. He's fresh off a breakout spell of months - most recently, winning two Tata Steel events (Rapid and Challenger) in two continents. Corrie, bellowing at 100kmph knocked down trees and disrupted flights at the Schiphol airport on Monday, and the other one, that goes by an Indian name, blew away the field the night before.Įighteen-year-old Arjun Erigaisi is getting used to the analogies. The tiny North Sea-side town of Wijk Aan Zee had two storms slamming its coast.
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