‘It’s tiring’: Indian Grandmaster Vidit Gujrathi retires at 27
Indian Grandmaster Vidit Gujrathi, captain of the Indian team that won the Online Olympiad Gold in 2020, has announced his retirement from professional chess at the age of 27. The announcement came, months after he reached a career-high live rating of 2740.
“I have struggled to bring home the results. It’s not just recently but it’s something that has been happening since a long time. I crossed the Elo barrier of 2700 in 2017, and it’s been over 4 years and I have been oscillating between the 2710-2730 mark. It’s tiring,” Gujrathi said in an interview with chessbase.in on Friday.
“The life of a chess player is very scattered. You have to be travelling every now and then to play tournaments. Hence, it becomes very difficult to spend time with your loved one,” he said.
India No 2 had also reached the quarter-finals of the FIDE World Cup 2021. The 27-year-old said that the Chess as a sport is a very lonely endevaour and at present he lacks motivation for the game and every trainning session feels like a drag.
“Chess is a very lonely endeavour. And not just while playing, also while training. You have to sit for hours yourself trying to find new ideas in different openings, only to realize that there is a dead-end at the end of a long variation. I am unable to force myself to find the motivation to work as I did in the past,” said Gujrathi, one of the best talents of Indian chess.
Gujrathi also accepted that taking a break from the sport would have only delayed the inevitable.
