Harikrishna ready for Moscow tourney

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, NOV. 19. His thoughts rivetted on the Moscow World Championship later this month, India's youngest ever grandmaster Pentalya Harikrishna has sought out his trusted trainer Evegeny Vladimirov for extensive preparations. The pair has already spent well over three weeks at the Wipro's Sarjapur Campus here and two weeks before the Moscow mission Vladimiro has no doubt that Harikrishna's level of play has gone up considerably.

Vladimirov, more famously known in the chess circles as Garry Kasparov's second in the 80s, has been working with India's newest chess sensation for nearly two years under the patronage of India's Software services giant Wipro which has signed on Hari as its ``chess ambassador'', providing him with moral and material support.

Under the Wipro scheme, Vladimirov would be summoned whenever Hari wants him. Vladimiro will accompany Hari to Moscow where the 15 year-old Indian who beat Anand's record to be the youngest Grandmaster meets a tough opponent in Beliavsky of Slovania in the first round on November 27. Vladimirov is cautiously optimistic about Hari's chances at Moscow. In short, Vladimirov assessment runs on these line. ``The system itself is unpredictable. Hari has drawn a tough opponent in Beliavsky and so it depends on how he raises to the occasion''.

Any one who is as highly rated as Beliavsky ought to be a hard nut to crack but Vladimirov's strategy is to get round the Slovak's shortcomings and to ``mess up'' as he put it standard positions in which Beliavsky is known to excel.

The camp's thrust this time has been on openings which Hari himself admits has been less than sharp. The pair is leaning heavily on computer technology which affords a chance to sample close to two million games which are hidden in its base. ``What we are basically looking is for new lines and novelties'', Vladimirov said while taking a break from the practice and training session at the Wipro facility this afternoon.

One area of definite improvement as Vladimirov put it has been ``end games''. In fact in hindsight it won him the Commonwealth championship. He has grown stronger in that area. Vladmirov observed.

More of a positional type, Vladimirov's doctrine is to be steady rather than be spectacular and shape into a ``universal player'' though he has ``pep talked'' Hari to adopt more aggression on the board.

Having achieved the GM status he set out for, what is Hari's next target: The shy guy from a remote village in Guntoor district is bent on improving his rating from the present 2,502 to at least 2,600. For that, Vladimirov warns, Hari needs to play well at higher levels and more importantly keep winning.

To improve his ``level'', Hari needs to play the chess elite more. Wipro has pledged its unstinted support and as a back up is contemplating the idea of bringing a reputed player for a ``match'' with Hari to give him greater scope for improvement.

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