This time, I will give it a different twist : Anand

NEW DELHI: The World Chess Championship loss in Chennai had "knocked the stuffing out" of Viswanathan Anand but the five-time winner on Wednesday said that clinching the Candidates title has boosted his confidence and he would try to avenge his loss to Magnus Carlsen later this year. 

Three losses over 10 games without a win and the world Championship title was in tatters last November but Anand soon scripted a historic turnaround when he registered three victories in 14 games without a defeat en route to his Candidates victory to earn a rematch against Carlsen. 

The 44-year-old Indian said delay in addressing his errors cost him the World title and it was his decision to stay away from chess, which helped him to recover emotionally and bounce back with a bang.

"I think many errors had cropped up in my approach to play chess. I was becoming reliant on computers and there were some mistakes coming up. I was not oblivious to it but I was not able to address the problem exactly right. I didn't have time to fix anything," Anand, who was to highlight the role of chess in Business Analytics in an NIIT event, said.

"I remembered long back once after the end of an event, me and (Anatoly) Karpov were talking. He mentioned that a player who had a bad tournament will take long time to recover from bad result because he was so much in love with the game and he didn't have something else to take his mind off chess. 

"So I decided that it was more important to recover emotionally, after all, a result like this knocks the stuffing out of you. So in December and January, I was trying to avoid chess. There were some tournaments which were unavoidable but most of the time I tried to get away from chess," he said. 

After losing his World Championship title, Anand bowed out in the group stage of the London rapid and also his performance at Zurich in March was not upto the mark. 

Anand said: "May be my opponents didn't focus on me properly or probably I was playing more freely. I had one of my best results in Candidates and I'm playing in World Championship in November. 

"I got my confidence back and I am very optimistic now. I know even if I face the same mistakes, I will act now differently," added Anand, who held the World title from 2007 to 2013.

Anand said he carried a lot of his World championship preparations to the Candidates tournament. 

"I was also lucky in a way that since my approach to the match backfired, I didn't get to use lot of my preparations and they were still there which I could carry over to the Candidates," he said. 

"I had a short training camp in February. I thought it was enough and it was more important to spend time at home, play with my son and wait for the hunger to come back and when I went to Khanty (Mansiysk), the first game went brilliantly, it was my first win over (Levon) Aronian and it gave a big boost to me," added Anand, a Padma Vibhushan awardee. 

Anand says he has a fair idea where he wants to work on before he takes on Carlsen later this year. 

"I have a fair bit of idea what I want to change and what I think went wrong. So I have an idea what I want to do. So I will choose my team accordingly. But right now, I don't want to give any details," Anand said.

"Secondly, I'm waiting for the bid. The bidding procedure will finish by the end of this month. So after that we will have an idea of the venue. It is roughly scheduled for November but I just want it to be confirmed," he added. 

Asked about his upcoming tournaments, Anand said he will play a lot of rapid events this year. 

"At the moment I am scheduled to play in Corsica in May. It is an exhibition event, then there is World Rapid and Blitz Championships (June 15-21) in Dubai and then I have an event in Geneva. I might put in another tournament but it depends on my training schedule. It is all very tentative," he said. 

"It is nice to play rapid chess again. Last year, I didn't get to play any rapid event, so it is good. This year, I will compensate for last year," he added. 

Asked if it would be a revenge match, Anand said: "Ya, well I will try to take the confidence to the World Chess Championship. It is inevitable that we will remember some aspects of that match but I will try to take it as a fresh match. 

"The previous results will obviously have some influence on my thoughts but it will be a different match. I will try to change the course and he is going to anticipate. I will think about what happened and try to give it a different twist this time," he said.

I'd start as fresher in world title match

In an exclusive interview, Anand says he is looking forward to the re-match with Carlsen.

New Delhi, April 16

After five-time champion Viswanathan Anand’s one-sided loss to Norwegian prodigy Magnus Carlsen in the World Championship match last November, many critics just wrote him off, saying that he was past his prime.

But the 44-year-old “Vishy”, as he is famously known among his fans, roared back to form in the 2014 Candidates Tournament to earn back his right to challenge the Norwegian for the World title. Anand remained unbeaten in this double round-robin tournament, scalping some of the biggest names of world chess like Levon Aronian of Armenia, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan and Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria.

So what exactly changed with Anand? The Tribune caught up with the man himself for an exclusive chat during his recent visit to the capital. Excerpts….

After losing the World Championship match to Magnus Carlsen, your critics had started writing you off. How difficult was it for you to come out of that phase and keep yourself motivated?

I simply just can’t explain what kind of efforts I had put in to come out of that phase. I took a lot of time not thinking about chess. Maybe, the time spent away from chess was actually very helpful.

How much family support played a part in finding your rhythm back? Do you think your decision to stay away from chess and spend time with your son Akhil helped you in becoming more relaxed?

It was very enjoyable period. I enjoyed my time with Akhil in the remaining weeks of November. For a while, I had no thoughts about my loss and that way, you heal emotionally much faster. I enjoyed my time with my family. I wouldn’t say everything got back to normal after that loss because in London Chess Classic, you saw the after-effects (Anand lost to Vladimir Kramnik of Russia in the quarter-final). In Zurich Chess Classic, I felt better but the results were not impressive. In Bundesliga, I did slightly better. After Bundesliga, I flew back to India and did not look at chess at all for roughly two weeks. I started looking back at chess only when I got to the Candidates Tournament.

Was it more about recovering emotionally from the World Championship loss rather than getting battle ready for a tough 2014 season?

It was a very testing period for me. The result had knocked the stuffing out of me. Even in 2013, there were good and bad moments but I felt the bad moments more intensely than the good ones and that was the unfortunate part. (After the loss against Carlsen), I had simply stopped following chess for a while. It was an unpleasant phase and I prefer not to look back at it anymore.

The win at the Candidates tournament came at a very dark time of your career? Where do you rate this particular title triumph in your illustrious career?

Well, first of all, it’s a great result. By any yardstick, it’s a good result, but having said that, there are some results which you really treasure. This one I will treasure for a long time.

Where do you think it went wrong against Carlsen in the World Championship match?

If you look at my game, my approach was starting to slip. Some errors had crept in my approach towards the game and I had started missing the plot slightly. Well, I do not want to go into the details again. In my previous World Championship matches, I was much more focused because you had the whole team, but even that kind of concentration did not help me much last year. I have no reasons to keep reliving that match. I really wanted to forget it. I would like to play Carlsen as a fresher.

There has never been such a rivalry than the one between the two mighty Russians, Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov. Can we expect such rivalry between you and Carlsen?

Well, who knows, but we are just into our second match. Those guys were constant companions for five years or something.

You had hinted last year that one could expect change in your team of seconds. What’s the status?

I did not confirm or deny it. I have a fairly good idea of what I want to change and what kind of work I want to do. The bidding procedure for the venue and month for the World Championship match will finish by the end of this month. I would first like to have these two confirmed, then I’ll decide on my team of seconds.

You are no longer the world champion. Have you made peace with this thought?

Everything you do, you suffer a bit in the beginning, and then slowly, with time, everything gets settled down. The fact that I had played the Candidates Tournament, I can understand that I am no longer the world champion.

Playing Carlsen was like playing a human computer: Anand

It has taken a while to find his way back to the black and white squares of a chess board. The loss to Magnus Carlsen in the World Chess Championship match has clearly not been easy to deal with. Vishy Anand, chess grandmaster, has been on a complete break. And he’s needed it. The match was played in his home town of Chennai and by the end of it, Anand was well beaten. He needed a break to clear his mind, to spend time with his son (Akhil) who was bawling in the background, to tell himself how much he truly loves the game. In an interview with Firstpost, Anand opened up about what went wrong in the world championship match, his future plans and the man who beat him. Excerpts:

Magnus Carlsen has, at various points, mentioned that once he sits down on the chess board he doesn’t believe that anyone could beat him. He carried that same confidence into the World Championship match too. What were your thoughts at the start of the match? Did you feel invincible too? I thought that if I had a good start, I would be able to play well. I thought that if I had a good start, I could force him out of his comfort zones. I was under no illusions that I would have to raise my game – but that’s exactly what I had worked so hard for. I knew I had a chance. I knew my recent shape had not been very good. But I was hoping that I had managed to turn all that around. A match like this is always tough.

In the sense, it almost feels like you are locked in a cage at times. At what point did you think it was over for you? Well, it was staggered. The first few games were probably okay. I thought I held my own. The fifth game (his endgame errors cost game five) loss hit me really hard. It was precisely the thing that I had worked so hard on; the areas that I had sought to improve in my preparation and I was unable to execute. In that sense, I failed. The 9th game blunder didn’t change things very much – I didn’t see a win, it would have been a draw. The 10th game was really nothing. Viswanathan Anand.

Reuters so what is it about Carlsen? Did any aspect of his game surprise you? He surprised me by changing so little. I know how he plays. But I expected him to come out and try something different. But he stuck to his guns – it was brave. It was also unexpected for me. Usually for a World Championship match, people work on something different… maybe something to surprise the opponent. Carlsen just stayed the same.

You have said that you couldn’t figure out Carlsen’s style. What does that mean? I thought I could get a grip on him. I thought that I could force him to make mistakes. I thought that if I stayed with him in the early going, I would be able to match him. But his style makes it difficult. In a sense, he is an all-rounder. He can do everything well and he makes mistakes – but they aren’t big enough to take advantage of. He is also unconventional – there are times when he will play something and take it back on the next move… to the same place.

 Did it feel like you were playing a computer? His approach resembles… I hesitate to say… computer. Put him in front of one and he’d lose easily. But he is very confident of his calculating ability – so in that sense… yes, probably like a human computer – if that makes sense. One of the things that were mentioned before the start of the match was that Anand was the openings specialist and Carlsen took over in the middle and end game.

Do you think you did enough with that advantage? I think what is not understood about Carlsen is that he is not bad at openings. He is not a specialist but a generalist. He can play a lot of opening and he can play them at a fairly high level. His aim is to get a solid position and you can’t do that at the top level if you are bad with openings. This thing about openings is an exaggeration.

So if Carlsen were to play Kasaprov – you have played them both – who wins? One thing that is clear about Carlsen is that he is one of a kind. I am a big believer in comparisons. I would say both are very good, very strong. But these are the kind of comparisons that chess buffs all over the world make all the time. It probably just adds to the fun… Well, Carlsen is a more allround player. His strengths are harder to determine. Kasaparov was a specialist. He thought hard about his game and had very specific strengths. So if anything, I would give Carlsen the edge there. Being an allrounder is not easy – you are backing yourself to keep up the level throughout the game but somehow Carlsen has managed it.

In interviews to the Norwegian press, Carlsen has criticized your approach, saying that you blamed tournament losses to preparation for the world championships. He has also said that he will never do that. Your thoughts? I guess you have to put up with some snide remarks when you have lost. But honestly, what can I say… You have spoken about wanting to play in the Candidates next year.

Does this loss change anything? Will your method change? Will you change? I think the recent trend is away from openings. In a sense, computers have killed the opening phase. There is only so much that you can do. So if anything can be done, it is to rebalance the game. That can only happen by concentrating on the middle and end game. For now though, I have taken a break from chess. Then I got to London for a tournament. Then I take another break – a long break. That’s when I will give it some serious thought – what I want to do and how I want to do it.

Do you think about your legacy? Is it about time to start thinking about it? Well, there are times when you wonder what you have done for the sport. I am happy at the kind of response that the match got in India and I feel I played some part in it. I would like to believe that India understands chess and with NIIT Mind Champions academy, I hope to help more players in the country. A legacy though is not just about what I think. Finally, how are you going to wind down? Probably with a game of Blitz – maybe on the internet, maybe just at home. Blitz would be fun. For the moment, I just want to enjoy chess without thinking of results; without thinking really.