Parents, first and foremost, it is important to... understand and recognise the activities your child is naturally gravitating towards. It's important also to ensure that your child likes what he or she is doing. I believe in exposing children to as many hobbies and extracurricular activities as possible.

Grandmasters decline with age. That's a given. There is nothing special about the age of 40, but age eventually takes its toll. That much is clear. Beyond that it's about how long you can put off the effects and compensate for them. Mistakes will crop in but you try to compensate for them with experience and hard work.

In the knockout tournaments, it's futile to prepare for a grand finale. You may have worked out many strategies for the final. But you may lose in the first round itself.

For me, each game is a new challenge, which has to be dealt with rationally and systematically. At that time, every other thought fades into oblivion.

India has lot of talent. What I am happy with is that the talent keeps on coming. Certainly it could be nice, though I am not terribly keen on seeing my successor yet.

I would never suggest to anyone that they drop school for chess. First of all even if you can make it in chess, your social skills need to be developed there.

Psychology plays a big part but I always say psychology will only be a differentiator when the players are of equal technical strength.