One day after the Tata Steel Chess India, held earlier this year, IM Sagar Shah caught up with Vidit Gujrathi and recorded his mind in action. He gave the 24-year-old four studies to solve. Of course, with a board, Vidit would not have had much difficulty. So, Sagar upped the ante by asking him to solve the puzzles blindfolded.
However, the absence of a board in front of him hardly made a difference. Vidit breezed through the variations every time. In each case Vidit cited the “feel” guided him to find the best moves, even when there were multiple options.
An awestruck Sagar asked Vidit at the end how he had developed this intuition which helped him find these brilliancies so quickly. Vidit replied: “In studies, something which is very pretty or attractive is the solution, because that is the whole point of the study – it’s very beautiful.”
We now invite you to take a dig at the studies yourself and try to find the pretty ones before you proceed to the video. You can move the pieces on the board to analyse.
Since Vidit admitted to having gone after “beauty” in the studies that were presented to him, Sagar decided to test him with a real game problem where the critical move may or may not be pretty. Vidit had some problems solving this last one but his “feel” was once again, spot on!
Vidit's insane blindfold calculations
Special thanks to ChessBase India for providing this video. There are hundreds of videos on their very successful ChessBase India YouTube Channel, and we are going to make vigorous use of them in the future.
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