How Aravindh Chithambaram overcame his ‘inner turmoil’ to justify bold predictions about his talent

“It was a very emotional moment for me also. Aravindh is like my son. I feel very happy that he’s going further and further upwards,” says Ramesh.

To win the title, Aravindh prevailed over an elite field that comprised players of the calibre of Arjun Erigaisi, Levon Aronian, Vidit Gujrathi and Parham Maghsoodloo. He defeated Arjun and Parham in the event in classical games and endured a tense three-way tiebreak against Arjun and Aronian to claim the title.

Aravindh was one of the first prodigies in Ramesh’s training group (which also included the likes of Praggnanandhaa and Vaishali R) and is someone Ramesh calls the “most talented” players he’s trained.

When Ramesh made a bold prediction about Aravindh

Just how talented Aravindh was in his early days can be gauged by one tale that Ramesh tells with particular glee. Back in 2013, Ramesh was doing commentary for the Viswanathan Anand versus Magnus Carlsen world championship battle with Susan Polgar. One of those days, he invited Polgar to his home for a meal. During that, he boldly proclaimed that he was teaching a 14-year-old kid who had not even achieved a single IM norm, but if he could secure the funds to play tournaments in Europe, he would become a grandmaster in six months. Aravindh had lost his father at the age of three and was raised by his mother. So finances to play events abroad were always thin.

“Polgar said maybe he can become an IM. But I don’t think he can become a GM in six months,” Ramesh recollects. Some time later, Aravindh joined them for dinner and revealed that he had won the open GM tournament happening alongside the world championship and, in the process, had earned his first of three norms to become a grandmaster.

Now seeing the boy’s potential with her own eyes, Polgar told Ramesh that he should speak about him in commentary during the next world championship game. That’s exactly what Ramesh did and it caught the eye of ChessBase owner Frederic Freidel, who put together a fund-raiser for Aravindh which ended up collecting $10,000 in the matter of a few days.

“Aravindh actually became a GM in six months after that,” beams Ramesh.

But since becoming grandmaster, Aravindh’s career never took off in the way everyone thought it would. Ramesh attributes that to his “inner turmoil”.

“There are times when he will feel low in confidence, so that used to drag him down a lot. He doesn’t have that inner turmoil anymore, it is better now. He used to feel a lack of confidence in himself. He was stuck around the 2640 rating level for a long time,” says Ramesh.

Ramesh points out that Aravindh grew in confidence after seeing other Indian prodigies playing well and rising rapidly in the ratings and rankings charts.

“These days he’s feeling more certain about himself. When you feel calm inside, in your mind, things work out better for you. In the last one year, he has been very consistent, gradually increasing his rating, crossing 2,700, which was a very important milestone. Then he started accelerating, and now he’s close to 2720, which is very good. This tournament he played in is a rare invitation he got to play in a closed tournament with an elite field. But thanks to this win, most likely, he’ll start getting invitations to play more closed tournaments in the future. I think that will drastically change his graph. Now he’ll be feeling that I belong to this group of players. I’m good enough.”