Chess
Tania Sachdev-Battle in black and the war in white
Ace Chess grandmaster gears up to take on the nation.
Tania Sachdev 2015 India
© Ali Bharmal
Chess is the gymnasium of the mind and Tania Sachdev certainly has some tricks to perform up her sleeve. The search for the ultimate Chess champion among the commonwealth countries concluded recently. Tania Sachdev, last year's bronze medallist , is now gearing up for #BattleForTheQueen!
As we caught up with Tania, we got to know about her training schedules, month long preparations and her dreams of putting up a show more spectacular than last year. This is what she had to say.
Battle For The Queen is about a week away. How excited are you about the impending competition?
I'm really looking forward to this year’s Battle For The Queen! It is a new and different concept. It will be a lot of fun playing with so many different people from all over the world on Twitter.
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You won Battle for the Queen hands down last year, is there any advice you'd want to give to aspiring Chess participants this year?
This time it's going to be different because I won't know who my opponent is and neither will I be able to see him/her. It is a new way of enjoying chess and they should have fun playing!
Give us some dope on how an aspiring Chess player should train to better his skill? How did you go about it when you were learning the trade?
All those who want to train in Chess must enjoy the sport and parents should give them all the support. Finding a good trainer is very important. A systematic and structured mode of training from the very start is key. Today the kids have so many opportunities of playing good tournaments. When I started playing there were hardly any tournaments and very few trainers. It meant missing a lot of school and traveling all the time. Fortunately, I had full support from my parents and I fell in love with the game very early on!
You just won the Bronze medal in the National Challengers championship, please tell us about your performance.
I am quite happy with my performance at the National Challengers. 3 of us finished with 9/11 points. I won myself a Bronze in the tie breaker. Besides the end result, game quality is very important and I had quite a few interesting games. There was a sense of consistency throughout.
Please tell us how top sports persons cope up with the highs and lows in their careers.
The highs are of course easier and way more pleasant to deal with than the lows! Over time in any competitive sport your mind gets trained to deal with the bad days and one gets better at it. But even after all these years there are times when a bad game means a sleepless night.
What are the future tournaments we can look forward to seeing you in?
I am going to play the Asian Continental Chess Championship in UAE on 1st August.
Stay tuned to battleforthequeen.redbull.com for more details.