Some of India’s top chess stars allowed themselves a brief break from training on Sunday to celebrate the birthday of Arjun Erigaisi. It was a small celebration, these days’ time is at a premium for India’s top chess talents R. Pragganandha, D Gukesh, Vidit Gujrathi, Erigaisi and Pentala Harikrishna.

But after the celebration, the players were back at work, cramming in some team work before they prepared to face off each other at the Tata Steel Chess India tournament, which started for them on Tuesday.

“Arjun’s birthday was a nice social event, for which we all came together. It had to be a bit short, but we had to keep it that way because of the very hectic schedules of players who have a lot of tournaments in general,” says coach of the team Srinath Narayanan. 

The frantic schedules of players, coupled with how little time they spend in India these days, meant that they could squeeze in just a short window of five days to train together in Kolkata for the upcoming Asian Games in Hangzhou. 

After the strenuously long FIDE World Cup in Baku which lasted for nearly a month, many of the Indians flew to Dusseldorf to play in the FIDE World Rapid Team tournament. After that, they landed in Kolkata— most of them at least, with Pragganandha being required to travel even more, across the country for felicitations — where they held a quick camp before the start of the country’s biggest rapid and blitz tournament. 

A photograph of a training session, posted by Vidit Gujrathi on social media, shows the players flanked by Srinath and Boris Gelfand, who has been invited by the AICF to coach the youngsters just for the camp. 

What’s remarkable about the image is that there is just one laptop open, the one in front of Gelfand. The Indian youngsters — each raised in the internet era — has a chess board to figure out tactics on.

While speaking to The Indian Express, Gelfund stated, “These days, it’s very easy to double check everything with engines. But these guys are very curious to learn by themselves over the board.” 

He added, “So we would have positions that I would check with engines to see if it was correct. They would do it over the board. And too often, it was correct. Maybe these players have had different mediums to learn aspects of the game than us, but they are as motivated and ambitious as us.”

The Soviet-born Israeli chess player, who famously challenged Viswanathan Anand for the world championship crown in 2012, currently helps the five-time world champion from India at the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy as a mentor and was invited by the AICF last year for a camp for the Indian national team players. They invited him again this year.