How Srinath Narayanan, a former U-12 World Champ, rediscovered his spark to become India’s 46th GM

One of the greatest chess masters Emmanuel Lasker once said, “When you see a good move – wait, till you find a better one.”

Now, Lasker was one of the strongest chess players ever. He was the world champion for an incredible 27 consecutive years. His chess theory and technique chess was way ahead of his time. He was also a renowned mathematician. So, of course, what he said makes a lot of sense.

But chess at the junior level is a very different ball game. There are come-from-behind wins, there are gutting losses, and there are very few draws. They play by instinct, they play without the fear that comes with age, and they ‘try’ things. That doesn’t mean the chess isn’t of high quality… it is but perhaps, the one thing they don’t do – with due apologies to Lasker – is wait.

Srinath Narayanan, who recently became India’s 46th Grandmaster, was one such phenom at the junior level. He, too, didn’t want to wait. A dangerous floater, he would often come into tournaments unseeded and then walk away with the trophy.

Take for example, the Tamil Nadu state U-7 championships. His coach put him in to get some experience but Srinath promptly went ahead and won it.

His first coach Sakthi Prabhakar remembers: “He was different from the first day. He was part of a group of 10 students that I was training and I would lay out chess problems for the kids to solve. And he started solving them almost immediately. There are certain things you are born with – he was special. I saw him becoming a World Champion or at least a GM.”

And he didn’t do this only at state or national level tournaments. He went into the 2005 U-12 Chess World Championships as an unseeded participant, expected to make up the numbers. But little did the organizers know that they were playing into Srinath’s hands.

In the previous World championship, in Dubai, Srinath had played badly and managed only five-and-half points out of nine. Pressure did strange things to him. But being unseeded let him play to his true potential.

The turnaround started after he beat the top seed Parimanjan Negi – his eternal rival at the junior level – in the sixth game.

“It wasn’t a great game,” said Prabhakar. “Narayanan lost his queen early but he hung on. And then Negi committed two blunders towards the end and Narayanan pounced on the opportunity. His confidence increased after that game.”

With Negi out of the way, he went on to win the tournament. It was an amazing, unexpected triumph. It won him accolades, media attention and a word of praise from Vishy Anand himself. To a young chess-loving boy from Chennai, that meant the world itself.

“I think Srinath is a stable player. He seems to slowly outmanoeuvre opponents and never takes undue risks. I attribute his victory to his steadiness,” Anand had then said.

To everyone watching, Srinath was destined for greatness – India’s youngest FIDE rated player at the age of 8, U-12 World Champion, IM at 14. But to the boy himself, the expectations were a burden.

“When I won my first tournament at the age of 7, I only cared only about the chess. The rest of it didn’t matter. But when I won the World Championships, the media coverage was pretty intense. Perhaps, I allowed myself to get carried away a bit,” said Srinath.

RB Ramesh, who had become India’s 10th GM, had by then turned to coaching and between the ages of 10-14, Narayanan worked with him.

“Chess at the junior level is very competitive. There is immense pressure on the kids to come good. And sometimes, because of that pressure they lose sight of what they really want to do. Instead of improving their play, they get absorbed in getting the right kind of results,” said Ramesh. “Winning is an addiction. They start thinking ‘I want to win’ when they really should be thinking ‘I want to get better’.”

That doesn’t mean that Narayanan’s progress stopped. Rather, it continued at a rapid pace. A few years later, he became an international master at the age of 14. Around that tie, the normal age to become an IM was 16-17. So in a sense, he was still ahead of the curve.

But that is when the funding stopped. If you want to become a Grand Master quickly, you need to play in Europe. If you want to play in Europe, you need money. If you want money, you need to play in Europe. A vicious circle and one that consumed Srinath’s father Narayanan, who then worked with General Insurance.

Any international tournament outside India cost a minimum of Rs.1 lakh (100,000) for one person. It was big money for a middle-class family… the kind of money one could only hope to raise through sponsors.

“But the sponsorship stopped at 14. Due to some other reasons, coaching stopped. The quality of tournaments took a dive,” said Narayanan. “Between the age of 14 and 17, I lost 100 ELO rating points.”

To understand what 100 ELO points mean, fathom this: When Narayanan became IM (2400 ELO rating) in 2007, Vidith Gujrathi (who is currently India’s third highest rated GM) was still at 2350.

Now Gujrathi has an ELO rating of 2687 and Narayanan has slowly climbed his way back to 2505.

“He was already a strong player then. I didn’t even make it to the U-12 World Championships,” said Gujrathi who is the same age as Srinath. “He got waylaid but I always knew he was a stronger player than his rating.”

So much about chess is in the mind that the pressure sometimes isn’t apparent but it’s there. You can be sure of that. For Srinath, the U-12 World title brought expectations – both at home and outside.

“It seemed that no matter where I went, everybody seemed to ask me just one question: why haven’t you become a GM? I would just smile and deflect but honestly, I didn’t want to be reminded,” said Srinath. “I just felt like whatever I did, it would always be below expectations.”

“I just felt like it was a distraction, an obstacle for progress and it restricted my ability to play freely. It bogged me down,” Srinath added.

At home, the pressure was of a different kind. His parents wanted him to win the nationals because that would attract sponsors.

“There was a considerable amount of pressure initially. They wanted me to win the nationals and it was not good for me,” said Srinath. “I couldn’t handle the pressure. I couldn’t win.”

Things got so bad that Srinath, the boy who love chess and winning, lost interest in both of those things.

“Chess gives me a certain kind of happiness but the pressure made it seem like a job. Not something I was doing because I love doing it. The expectations were always about success,” Srinath said with a startling frankness. “I just didn’t feel like playing.”

Srinath tried getting his head back in the game. He tried fighting it, he spoke to people, he spoke to himself, and he spoke to Anand.

“I reached out to Anand, spoke to him multiple times, he suggested things, books but it didn’t help,” said Srinath. “Eventually, at some point, I realised I had to help myself. That self-realisation was a turning point. It was a straight talking session with myself about why I should continue to play chess.”

Russian GM Andrey Deviatkin helped him regain an edge to his game and he did it by telling him that he didn’t need the edge. Once the pressure was off, Srinath quickly found that winning wasn’t all that difficult. And more importantly, it was fun.

GM Abhijit Kunte first met Srinath when he was 19 and helped him polish his skills. The Chennai lad would often take trips to Pune to get coaching tips while studying at Vivekananda College.

“Srinath struggled for around four years but he has made the cut through sheer will power,” said Kunte. “The final pressure he somehow couldn’t handle but because of what he has gone through, he has psychologically become very strong.”

The “will power” bit isn’t exaggerated. To take care of his own travel and tournament expenses, Srinath gave lessons online to players aged between 12 and 14, for four years.

“But perhaps the lesson he got from all of this was that he didn’t need to play for success. By the time, I met him he was already not where people expected him to be,” said Kunte. “Still it was not like he hadn’t done anything at all. Srinath won his first GM norm in 2012 by winning the Asian Junior Chess Championship and then defended the title again in 2013. It’s just that the third norm took a while.”

The wait for the third norm could have become a chronic issue. But instead, it just made Srinath stronger.

“He is a more mature now,” said Ramesh, who still Skype chats with Srinath regularly. “He realises what went wrong. But it all begins for him now. Earlier, he was looking up at the GMs, now he is standing with them.”

Indeed, somehow, things seemed attaining the third norm and becoming GM has made things come a full circle for Srinath. When he became the U-12 Champion, Anand had praised him and the veteran did that when he finally became a GM too.

This, at times, might sound like a cautionary tale but it really is more about finding the sheer guts to chase your dreams even if it means having to fight yourself for it. It shows us that hope follows despair if you are prepared to buckle down and get dirty. It showed us why you need to persevere when things get tough.

To Gujrathi, becoming a GM was like breaking a barrier of sorts.

“Before becoming a GM, I was scared of losing of losing because sometimes losing meant you would miss out on a norm. But when I finally became a GM, it was like I could go full power.”

For Srinath too, becoming GM represents a breakthrough, one that he fought long and hard to achieve and hopefully he will going back to being a floater that even Magnus Carlsen must be wary of. After all, as he has shown, that is when he is at his most dangerous.