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After an intense tournament, chess players usually relax on flights with the possible outcomes or moves still playing in their heads. Not 20-year-old Woman Grandmaster (WGM) Vantika Agarwal, though. Its not that she doesnt want to replay those moves in her head. She just cant afford to.

Instead of analysing the games or studying her next opponent, Vantika, Indias third-ranked womens player with an ELO rating of 2428, has had to study for exams, which she says were perennially around the corner. Pursuing her Bachelor of Commerce with Honours, studies are something that cant take a backseat even though her priority is chess.

Balancing a professional chess career and studying for an Honours degree is no mean feat, but the Delhi girl has found a novel way of acing both. My mother reads the book to me on the flight. I just try to understand and grasp whatever I can. During competitions, she actually studies for me and then just explains the concepts. Since shes a chartered accountant herself, she knows most of the concepts I have to study, Vantika told The Indian Express on Saturday, a day after she finished her final sixth-semester paper, possibly the last exams shell give for a while.

Now, she says, her focus can finally be entirely on chess. Its taken tremendous sacrifices from my family to reach where I have, and now its time to pay them back for their effort, she says.

As an eight-year-old, Vantika wanted to try all sports. From cricket to football, badminton to tennis, even karate and skating, she tried her hand at everything. I loved to try out new things as pastimes. I went for art and piano lessons too. My parents encouraged me to try out new things and I took that rather seriously, she says.

Chess, however, wasnt a sport Vantikas parents expected her to get hooked on. I remember I started playing chess in school with my brother, whos a couple of years older than me. I learned some basics and then won a tournament in school. Thats when I asked my parents to enroll me in an academy, she says.

Thats when everything changed. She wanted to learn all the aspects of the sport. The various openings, pawn structure, middlegame, and anything that would help her. When she began applying those concepts and winning tournaments, she knew that playing chess is all she wanted to do.

After getting some great wins on the local circuit, she knew that the next step was nationals and other tournaments in the country. The only problem was with both her parents being chartered accountants, they seldom had time to take her to tournaments. Thats when her mother Sangeeta decided to make the ultimate sacrifice. She gave up her flourishing practice to ensure that she could travel with Vantika for all the tournaments and basically be her unending support.

Financially, too, it was a huge burden especially when it came to playing in international tournaments. Its only of late that she managed to get some sort of sponsorship and Vantika says its a huge relief to take the burden off her parents.

Shes set her sights on the Grandmaster title, a feat she hopes to accomplish this year. To be honest, I wouldve become a Grandmaster at 14. Its just that studies got in the way. I wasnt able to participate in many tournaments because of them. I even had to skip several fully-paid international tournaments because of them. Form is vital in chess but because of repeated breaks, I wasnt able to maintain that which is why my performance suffered at times. But now thats done, and I cant wait to hit peak form, she says.

While she enjoys playing the Classical format, its Blitz thats her favourite. You have no time to think. Even when we were training for the Olympiad last year, we just practiced Blitz. It helps to think and analyse quickly which helps in other formats.

Along with her goal of becoming a Grandmaster, she is also targeting a place in the Indian team for this years Asian Games. But at just 20, she already has her long-term goal set: getting a shot at the Womens World Championship title. 2023, she says, is going to be her year.

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Juggling studies and chess, rising chess star Vantika Agarwal sets sights on Grandmaster title - The Indian Express