9/17/2022 – In the fourth episode of “Olympiad Stories with Saravanan”, we focus on the 14th world champion, Vladimir Kramnik. Kramnik arrived at the world scene in 1992 at the Manila Olympiad, with a score of 8½/9. His performance rating was over 2900! This was the stage where he broke through, before eventually defeating Garry Kasparov in the World Championship. In this episode, you get to know not only about the 1992 Olympiad and Kramnik’s games, but also about Vladimir’s personality.

7/22/2022 – In the third episode of the series "Olympiad stories with Saravanan", IM Sagar Shah and IM Venkata Saravanan discuss Judit Polgar's flabbergasting 12½/13 performance in the 1988 Thessaloniki Olympiad. Judit was rated 2365 FIDE at the time, with rating lists coming out every six months. Not only did Hungary sweep the championship to take gold and defeat the all-powerful Soviet chess team, but Judit had an incredible 2694 performance, and she was barely twelve years old. To better put this in perspective, you need to realize that, in 1988, only two players in the world had 2700+ ratings: Kasparov and Karpov. | Photo: Abhyudaya Ram

7/15/2022 – This is the 2nd episode in the series of Olympiad stories with Saravanan. In this episode, we discuss the Madras Tiger Vishy Anand and some of his memorable games at the Olympiad. In discussing the games, Saravanan and Sagar also go into the history of how Vishy developed as a chess player. Saravanan saw the lightning kid style of play of Anand and also the more mature and calm style. This is part of a 6-episode series of the most interesting stories from the Chess Olympiads. | Photo: Abhyudaya Ram.

1/5/2021 – In his first podcast of 2021 Eric van Reem continues his talk with the renowned trainer and writer IM Venkatchalam Saravanan from India. In part I of the podcast they talked about the chess year 2020, the online chess boom in India, the upcoming Anand biopic, and the Candidates Tournament. In part II they talk about chess books. | Photo: Amruta Mokal

12/31/2020 – In his last podcast of the year Eric van Reem had an extensive talk with the renowned trainer and writer IM Venkatchalam Saravanan from India. In part I of the podcast they talk about the chess year 2020, the online chess boom in India, the upcoming Anand biopic, the Candidates Tournament, and a few other topics. | Photo: Amruta Mokal