Inside Vidit Gujrathi’s preparations for the 2024 Candidates: Team of 3-4 trainers, 2 prep tournaments and costs of over Rs 1 crore | Chess News

Sometime during the past month, as Vidit Gujrathi huddled with his trainers to map a course towards the Candidates tournament in Toronto in April this year, one of his coaches suggested that he take time out before the tournament and go visit the Niagara Falls.It was an intriguing suggestion, one that would take the 29-year-old out of his usual pre-tournament comfort zone. In the haze of an impending tournament, he is usually wired with only matters of the chequered squares occupying his mindspace.
“We’ll land in Toronto just five or six days before the Candidates starts. The idea to see Niagara Falls (before the Candidates) is that it will just put me in a good mood before a big event. I’ve never done something like this. I hate sightseeing: I absolutely hate going out around tournaments. Playing in events is so exhausting that I have no energy left. But I can see the merits in doing so (visiting Niagara Falls before the Candidates starts). I’m not sure if we’ll get the visa and everything in time though,” Vidit tells The Indian Express.
Vidit Gujrathi at the Mumbai Press Club. (Credit: Amit Kamath)
Explaining his rationale for seriously considering his trainer’s idea, Vidit says: “I was stagnant for a couple of years. I feel like if I keep doing the same things the result will be the same. That’s why over the last two years I have changed so much about myself that I feel I am a different person. Things I used to do two years ago, I would not do now. Earlier, I used to play a tournament then take a break, recharge and then play another event. But last year, I played nearly 230 games over the board. This is besides the online games I played.”
The 2024 Candidates tournament — which will see three Indian men’s players in the eight-player Open field with Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa in the fray besides Vidit while Vaishali and Koneru Humpy will be in the Women’s Candidates — will offer a gateway to the World Chess Championship battle against Ding Liren.
“The magnitude of the tournament is different. The stakes are very high. It’s unlike any other tournament. The Candidates comes around once in two years and for that also you have to sweat a lot to get in. This is why any player will use all the resources possible to prepare for the Candidates. For a closed-door event, players will have one coach. But for the Candidates there will be a big team of trainers,” he says. “In any other tournament, second place is acceptable. At the Candidates, it’s not! There, only first place will matter. So the approach of people will be different.”
As per Vidit’s estimates, he will be spending upwards of Rs 1 crore over the next four months to prep for the Candidates: this includes trainers’ fees for four months (some foreign trainers charge as much as $500 per hour), flight and boarding costs for the trainers in India for long training camps, and then also flight and boarding costs to Canada for the entourage, which is going to be a month-long affair.

While he has sponsors like Bharat Forge and Lakshya who have backed him for a decade, he is yet to get state sponsorship from Maharashtra or from the central government. Pragg and Gukesh both will be backed financially the Tamil Nadu government. AICF, the Indian governing body for chess, has pledged financial assance of Rs 2 crores to be divided between the five Indian players.
“If the government could step in and financially aid this training process, it would be one less thing to worry about for me as a player. I’m the first player from Maharashtra at the Candidates. I’m really hoping the Maharashtra government helps out financially. I’d be very happy. I’d want to focus on my craft,” he says.
Need massive team
While this is the first time Vidit will compete in the Candidates, he has experienced the intense prep that goes into training for an event before this: he was part of Anish Giri’s team for the Dutch player’s Candidates bid in 2016.
“For one month, we worked for like 12 hours daily in the Netherlands. And it was just one of the training camps that Giri and his coaches held before the Candidates that year. The amount of preparation that goes into the Candidates is huge. You need a massive team,” he says.
Vidit says he will have a three- or four-member team of trainers and seconds in place for the Candidates bid. While he prefers to keep the names of two of these trainers close to his chest, he revealed that Surya Shekhar Ganguly and Italian GM Daniele Vocaturo would be part of this team. Besides a team of trainers, Vidit will also have in place specials like a nutrition, a physical trainer and a psycholog.

“Daniele and Surya have helped me over the past year or so. I’m very grateful to them for helping me achieve everything I have in the last year. The rest of the team I am not revealing yet,” he says.
Ahead of the Candidates, Vidit will be in contention in two events: Wijk Aan Zee (Tata Open Chess in the Netherlands) and the Prague Masters in February-March.
“I feel warmed up if I play events. It’s very hard to replicate that with just a training camp. For me, the neurons in the brain start to fire only when I am in competition,” says Vidit.
“I know what I am doing. At least I think I do!” chuckles Vidit.