PM Narendra Modi With Chess Masters: Of Artificial Intelligence, A Birthday And India's Sporting Might

Artificial Intelligence, an upcoming birthday, and the ambition to make India a sporting powerhouse came up for discussion when Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted the Olympiad gold-winning Indian chess teams at his residence, seeking to understand their mindset in the high-pressure event. In the interaction that took place on Thursday evening, both the men''s and women''s teams, who won gold medals in the event for the first time ever, sat with the PM to share their experience and also ask him about his interest in sports.

The men's team featured the youngest ever world championship challenger D Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi, Vidit Gujrathi, P Harikrishna and captain Srinath Narayanan.

The women's team was made up of R Vaishali, Tania Sachdev, D Harika, Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agrawal. They were captained by Abhijit Kunte.

Modi asked them about their sensational run during which the men's team won 21 of the 22 points on offer and the women gathered 19 from a total of 22. He also wanted to know how their opponents reacted to the stupendous performance.

"All our opponents expressed their happiness for us," responded Harika.

"We won so convincingly, it felt that nobody could touch us," added Sachdev, who said her team was determined to beat USA, the country that denied them the top spot during the previous Olympiad in the final round.

Gukesh, who is now gearing up for the much-awaited world title clash against China''s Ding Liren in November-December, reiterated that it was team-work that steered the gold-winning show.

"This experience was a great team effort. We were in excellent form, we were all super motivated. In the last Olympiad, there was one match which I should have won to guarantee a gold for India