Ask Gayatri: A live show with a world class sports psychologist
Psychology plays an important part when it comes to sport. More so in chess, which is a complete mind game. The amount of time we spend honing our chess skills is huge, but the amount of time we spend in fine-tuning our mindset and our psychology is very low. That's the reason why players are often afraid of fighting it out against lower rated players, or go into a depressed state of mind after a bad event, or just cannot perform well in the last round must-win situation. In order to address these points and also to answer your questions ChessBase India has arranged a live show with well-known sports psychologist and former international badminton player Gayatri Vartak. It will be held on the ChessBase India YouTube Channel on 19th of April at 6 p.m. IST. More details in the article.
Bobby Fischer said, "I do not believe in psychology, I believe in good moves!" But we all know how much he made use of psychology to become one of the best players in the world. When he didn't turn up for the second game of the 1972 World Championship Match, it made Spassky uncomfortable. When Spassky conceded to playing inside an isolated room which was of the size of a janitor's closet from round three onwards, where there were no cameras, it really was a psychological victory for Fischer, which subsequently led to him becoming a World Champion. Later people exclaimed "If Karpov was Fischer's opponent, he would have been unperturbed by Fischer's demands and would have not felt bad about winning games on forfeit. That's because Karpov is psychologically very strong."
All of this leads to one thing - the game of chess is closely knitted to psychology. If you can make your psyche strong, if you can have the right mindset before the game, during the game, as well as after the game, then you can expect your moves on the board to also get better. That's the reason why ChessBase India has organized a YouTube Live session with a well-known sports psychologist Gayatri Vartak.
Who is Gayatri?
Gayatri is a former international badminton player. She represented India in the prestigious Uber cup. She was a sub junior national champion and a top 100 singles player in the world. She has also been a state level swimmer. After her decade long badminton career, she went on to pursue her Masters in Psychology from Pune University and held a rank in the university for the same. She then co-founded Samiksha Sports Pvt Ltd along with her colleague Janki. While Samiksha began to grow slowly and steadily she pursued an MSc in Psychology of Sport and Exercise in the U.K. Having done that, Janki and Gayatri became the only sport psychologists in India to be recognized by the British Psychological Society. Samiksha has grown from working within Pune to having offices within 3 major cities, namely Pune, Mumbai and Bangalore. The consultancy currently caters to prestigious sports institutions in the country. BCCI’s National Cricket Academy, Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy, Olympic Gold Quest, Army Sports Institute, Virat Kohli Foundation amongst many others. They have worked with more than 1200 athletes. Gayatri is currently also pursuing her PhD, the results of which are expected to influence the sporting eco-system in India for the better.
When will the session be held?
The session will be held on 19th of April 2020, Sunday at 6 p.m. You can access it by pressing the play button from the embed given below. But if you would like to ask her questions during the show, then you need to go to YouTube.
Send in your questions:
1. Do you have trouble facing higher or lower rated opponents?
2. Do you take a lot of time to recover after your losses?
3. Do you more often than not show poor chess in critical final round encounters?
If you have specific questions which you would like Gayatri to answer, we recommend that you send them to chessbaseindia@gmail.com. In that way Gayatri can make sure that she doesn't miss them out during the show as there will be a lot of people commenting in the live chat on YouTube.