Grachev not concerned about rating performance in Chennai

On his first visit to Chennai, Grachev is impressed with the playing strength of the Indians, especially some of the International Masters. “They are stronger than what their rating suggests,” he says and quickly adds, rating is not his concern anyway. 

Grachev had a career-best rating of 2705 four years ago but now he feels he is torn between two worlds: he is too young to be playing chess without “expectations” and at times he feels he belongs to the old generation in a world of young masters looking to conquer the heights. “I want to play good chess,” declares the chess professional, seeded No 1 in the Chennai Open with a rating of 2652. “I don’t look at expectancy too much,” philosophises Grachev, who finished eleventh scoring seven points from 10 rounds in the Delhi Open before coming to Chennai. “In fact, I am losing seven rating points from Delhi,” he smiles. 

“There are too many chess players in Russia, so getting invitations is a difficult task,” says Grachev but points out that his rating is still good enough to take up chess as a profession. He had trained under Vladimir Valfsom before moving ahead with International Master Mark Dvoretsky, a renowned theoretician. 

Grachev’s best performance so far is the qualification to play in the Russian Super final, a round-robin event for the top 10 players in their country. “I scored four points from eight draws in the 2014 Super final and that was a pretty good result,” says the Russian. 

Grachev has played against Pentala Harikrishna, Krishnan Sasikiran, Parimarjan Negi and Baskaran Adhiban in tournaments like Aeroflot Open (Moscow). “I have also played along with Harikrishna in the Turkish league,” recalls Grachev. “But my rating is going down and the economic situation for chess (lack of sponsors) is also not good.” 

It looks like the Russian would also drop some rating points in Chennai as he lost a crucial game in the seventh round.