Stronger and surer after Olympiad gold, Vantika devotes herself to the 64 squares

Not having to expend her energy on academics any longer, the 22-year-old is spending more time on chess. An improving multi-format player, she has set her sights on becoming a Grandmaster and augmenting her collection of medals

Maternal pride is writ large on Sangeeta Agrawal’s face as she speaks about how she prepared her daughter for the Chess Olympiad. “I made her play in 28 tournaments,” she says from the players’ lounge of the Tata Steel Chess India tournament at Kolkata. 

Her daughter, Vantika Agrawal, doesn’t have a sponsor, so that meant spending an awful lot of money. It proved money well spent.

Starring role

Not only did Vantika play a starring role in the Indian women’s triumph at the Olympiad in Budapest in September, she also won the individual gold on the fourth board. When India’s players on the top two boards, D. Harika and R. Vaishali, struggled a bit, it was the consistently superb efforts by Vantika and Divya Deshmukh that helped the women win the team gold, as they replicated the great victory by the men’s team.

The Olympiad could very well prove a turning point in Vantika’s career. She is not just a stronger player, she is a more confident player. She is spending a lot more time on chess, not having to spend her energy on academics any longer. And she is also getting better as a multi-format player. That was evident earlier this month at Kolkata, where she finished third in the rapid section and fourth in the blitz (she had tied for third but had an inferior tie-break score).

She had begun as the 10th seed in a field of 10 in both sections, and did better than all the other Indian women — Koneru Humpy, Harika, Divya and Vaishali. She proved herself in a field that contained players such as three-time World blitz champion Kateryna Lagno, Alexandra Kosteniuk, Valentina Gunina and Aleksandra Goryachkina.

Vantika isn’t entirely happy with her showing, though. “It would have been nice if I could have finished third in the blitz too,” says the 22-year-old from Noida. “I lost some games that I had winning positions in, otherwise I could have done much better.”

She couldn’t have hoped to do a lot better at the Olympiad, though. Yes, there was a crucial game in which she snatched a draw from the jaws of victory, and that made her feel terrible.

Vantika showed character to bounce back after her draw with Alicja Sliwicka in India’s match with Poland. It was her blunder with the queen on the 56th move that turned her game into a draw and ended India’s great winning streak that had stretched to seven matches.

“I knew I let my team down, and there is no worse feeling than that,” Vantika recalls. “That position was in front of my mind’s eye all the time; my blunder, Qe4, haunted me. Whatever I did, my mind was filled with that position, even while I was taking a bath, or travelling on the bus.” 

Recovering in style

She is grateful that her mother was with her. Sangeeta has sacrificed her career as a chartered accountant to act as Vantika’s travelling companion ever since she started playing chess as a seven-year-old. “She was telling me how well I handled pressure and things like that,” says Vantika. “That helped.”

Her results at the Olympiad prove it. In the following rounds, she won two and drew one, ensuring that the Indian women lived up to their top billing. “Those games were important for our team, and if I hadn’t done well, it would have been disastrous,” she says. “I was delighted that I could win my game and the match against Azerbaijan. We could thus win the gold.”

She also won the individual gold on the fourth board, which was actually what she was dreaming  of before the Olympiad. “I wanted to win the team and individual gold medals,” she says. “It wasn’t easy handling the pressure as we were the top seed.”

She says she was happy to play on the fourth board. The decision to field Divya on the third board also worked. “She was higher rated than me,” says Vantika. “Playing D. Harika and R. Vaishali on the top two boards also made sense as they are solid players. In the Asian Games, too, I had played on the fourth board and had scored heavily.”

Vantika wasn’t quite prepared for the reaction back home to India’s stunning victory in Hungary. “I was so shocked, in fact,” she says, smiling. “Some of my college friends, who don’t even know anything about chess, texted me that they were watching the live streaming of the Olympiad and were wishing me for my next game. And after winning the medal, I have received messages and calls from everyone — my college friends, school friends, my school teachers, my dad’s friends, colleagues... My mom and dad were constantly getting calls, too. Of course, nothing like that has ever happened to me.”

Nothing like that has happened before in Indian sport — India emerging as the world champions in both the men’s and women’s sections at the same time, that too against opposition from more than 190 countries. Vantika says the women’s team was inspired by the men, who came up with one of the most dominant shows in the history of the Olympiad as they won the event by a margin of four match points, winning 10 matches and drawing the other.

“The men were magnificent,” she says. “And Arjun Erigaisi and D. Gukesh were brilliant. I think it was a great decision to play Arjun on the third board, fielding Gukesh on the first board was a no-brainer. They both crushed the field.”

She says the women’s team also benefited from the decisions made by non-playing captain Abhijit Kunte. “He also helped us with our openings and motivated us when we were feeling down after the match against Poland,” says Vantika. “And I think the All India Chess Federation also did the right thing by letting our seconds, Arjun Kalyan and Swayams Mishra, travel with us. They contributed a lot towards our preparation.”

The GM goal

Vantika’s goal now is to become a Grandmaster. Only three Indian women have achieved that — Koneru Humpy, Harika and Vaishali.

Her mother says she will have to play a lot more open tournaments, as a player needs to make three Grandmaster norms and attain a FIDE rating of 2500. She is on 2392, but a year ago she was on 2435.

“She isn’t getting invitations to good tournaments,” says Sangeeta. “So we have to play in open events wherever we can.”

How did it all begin for Vantika?

“My brother and I went to the chess room one day and we were attracted,” she says. “We told our mother that we wanted to learn it. She enrolled us in an academy. In the first tournament I played, I won a prize. Then I kept winning medals at all levels — Nationals, Asian, Commonwealth, world...”

She has no intention of stopping anytime soon.

Published - November 29, 2024 11:31 pm IST