Without a coach or sponsors, he is trying to become India’s next grandmaster | Anuj Shrivatri 

In this compelling installment of GyanMaster Diaries, host Aditya Sur Roy profiles International Master Anuj Shrivatri following his victorious campaign at the 1st Burhanpur Open FIDE Rated Rapid Tournament. Hailing from Madhya Pradesh, Shrivatri’s conquest is not merely a tale of a tournament win but a windows-into-the-soul look at the harrowing transitional phase separating an International Master from the coveted Grandmaster title. Operating entirely without a coach or stable sponsorship, Shrivatri’s story exposes the grueling mental and financial friction points endured by India’s next generation of chess elite.

The Lone Wolf’s Gambit: Inside the Mind of Anuj Shrivatri

There is a quiet, unsung crisis brewing in the mid-tiers of professional sports, and in Indian chess, it manifests at the 2450 Elo threshold. It is the invisible wall separating International Masters (IM) from Grandmasters (GM)—a zone where raw talent ceases to be enough, and the harsh arithmetic of finance and mental endurance takes over.

Veteran journalist Aditya Sur Roy’s sit-down with freshly crowned Burhanpur Open champion, IM Anuj Shrivatri, plays less like a standard post-victory celebration and more like a tactical briefing from the front lines of self-reliance.

The Burhanpur Campaign: Fighting from the Top Board

Fresh off securing an impressive 8/9 points to claim the 1 Lakh INR top prize, Shrivatri describes a battlefield where being the top seed feels less like a privilege and more like a bullseye. “Most of my rounds… those were not easy,” Shrivatri notes with a seasoned calm. “Every round, it was getting tough and tough.”

When pressed on his most precarious encounter, Shrivatri points to a high-wire tactical melee against BV Gowrang. The game was an unstable, dynamic puzzle that could have shattered either way. Shrivatri’s solution was elegant: strip away the volatility. He systematically simplified the board, steering the chaos into a technically equal but demanding endgame, forcing his opponent into a labyrinth of precise micro-decisions until a mistake materialized.

Conversely, his finest moment of the tournament was a masterclass in positional patience with the black pieces against Vaibhav Jayant Raut. Faced with the pressure to push for a win from an asymmetric position, Shrivatri focused on minute, constructive adjustments, maintaining an anchor when a single over-ambitious step could have been fatal.

The Ecosystem Problem: The Cost of an Untitled Horizon

The true substance of the interview begins when the conversation pivots away from the boards and toward the ledger books. To fund a single competitive loop into Europe—where GM norms are most viable—costs an Indian player between 1.5 to 2.5 Lakh INR.

Without a corporate patron, Shrivatri has built a fragile, self-contained micro-economy. He selectively takes on private coaching clients, balanced carefully so it doesn’t cannibalize his own training energy, and relies on cash prizes from domestic rapid tournaments like Burhanpur to keep his aspirations solvent.

It is a stark contrast to his brief brush with institutional stability in 2019, when a scholarship from Indian Oil was immediately swallowed by three years of pandemic-induced global lockdowns.

The Dual Track: Software Engineering vs. The Board

Perhaps the most fascinating revelation is Shrivatri’s pragmatism. He is no single-minded chess monk; he completed a rigorous B.Tech in Computer Science from Lovely Professional University (LPU) in 2025, even completing a year-long software development internship with a German corporation.

Following graduation, he faced the ultimate modern dilemma: step into the secure, predictable trajectory of a software developer, or gamble on his true calling. The enthusiast won out. Shrivatri gave himself a strict timeline: pursue chess full-time until the GM title is secured, then re-evaluate his vectors based on the toll it takes.

The No-Coach Protocol

At an elite tier where top players deploy teams of seconds, computer clusters, and grandmaster coaches, Shrivatri works in isolation. “Having a full-time coach… it is not very practical for me,” he admits frankly.

Instead, his training methodology relies entirely on an unrelenting, objective self-critique. His routine after any tournament—regardless of a first-place finish—is to return home, take an analytical stock of his missteps, and isolate both the chess inaccuracies and the negative mental states that bred them. Shrivatri’s philosophy is simple: learn from the imperfections, avoid getting stuck in a box, and keep expanding.