The World No. 20 has lost a ton of rating points since becoming champion (almost 50 last year alone), but Gajewski says he can see some changes over the last few weeks. ‘Changes’ in this context are out of bounds as well as out of the ballroom. “The way he’s performed here, there’s optimism,” he says. “It’s not perfect, of course, it doesn’t match our ambitions, but it’s better. There’s an improvement.” Asked to explain, the 40-year-old says it’s about his ‘resistance’. “He had a few good games at Tata Steel and that was it. The rest of the tournament was bad, Prague was also bad. It’s not that he played good chess here, it’s normal. It’s not his A game for sure, but it’s easy to perform well when it’s your A game. For me, the important thing is that he keeps his level regardless.”
Even within this response, resilience is of two types. One, this ability to fight past subpar results and maintain it. And, two, the ability to turn lost positions into wins. It is what he did against R Praggnanandhaa in one of the earlier rounds in Oslo. At one point, he was on time and against the engine as well, but he made a sequence of strong moves and it was a move from checkmate when his compatriot resigned.
Off board, he’s also ‘happier’. “Anyone who watched him on his day off will know that for sure. He’s also very sharp.” The 2,732-rated player, who has already named the full seconds team for the World Championship match against Javokhir Sindarov, has not had much time to focus solely on training due to the calendar. It is one of the reasons why he decided to withdraw from the Grand Chess Tour.
