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Chess Oscar, an icing on the cake: Anand

Special Correspondent

‘Now I have to think of my preparations for the World championship match’

— PHOTO: Anu Pushkarna

KING OF 64 SQUARES: Viswanathan Anand, not one to sit on his laurels, has already set his mind on future challenges.

NEW DELHI: He wonders whether “cricket is interrupting the cheer girls or cheers girls are interrupting cricket.” He does not believe in targeting any popular sport but talks of “doing something in a small way” to raise the profile of lesser sporting disciplines. He deals with answer-seeking school children and mediapersons besides a host of autograph-seeking students of Information Technology with equal ease.

Indeed, Viswanthan Anand is one of a kind and remains kind to one and all.

As NIIT’s Brand Ambassador, he is doing his bit to give back to the game through the company’s Mind Champions Academy. It is this initiative that brings the current World champion who is also the game’s top-ranked player to the country at least twice every year.

After an hour-long interactive teleconference with chess-playing children seated at 12 centres, Anand took questions from journalists at other NIIT centres before facing the scribes from the Capital on Friday.

Never in doubt

A fifth Chess Oscar for Anand was never in doubt after his dream run 2007. During the year, he won the prestigious Linares title and on the same day, became the World’s top-ranked player for the first time in his illustrious career. Later in the year, he regained the World title, won last in 2000.

“It is an icing on the cake. It is also a pleasant reminder of how wonderful 2007 was. Since it comes when this year is four months old, it is nice to look back and feel good about what you did to win the Oscar,” said Anand as he quickly ran through the highs of the year.

“I won the Linares title again this year, so I hope I can win the World championship title (at Bonn, Germany, in October) and also a few more tournaments this year. I am very happy to win the Oscar but now I have to think of my preparations for the World championship match,” said Anand.

On his preparations for the World title match against Russian challenger Vladimir Kramnik, Anand said, “The preparations have already started. But I don’t want to raise the intensity so early.

“I will be playing (rapid events) in Leon and Mainz. A tournament is a tournament. There is nothing quite like playing games. It is nice to go through the tensions of a tournament before playing a big match like the World Championship.

About Kramnik, Anand said, “we are not close friends. I have not socialised with him for a long time but there is no animosity. We exchange pleasantries and so on. I don’t want to look at the World championship match as a clash between the Champion and the Challenger. It is Anand versus Kramnik. May be, it is customary to make strong statements in the period leading to the championship match. I agree, you cannot be expected to be very friendly to your opponent. But may be, after six months or so, Kramnik and me can talk about it and have a laugh over it.”

Different intensity

How does one prepare for a 12-game match as compared to an eight-player round-robin competition?

“The intensity differs. For a tournament, you cover a lot of ground but not with the same intensity. In a match, you have to deal with a single player but you have to deal with him again and again. So you are supposed to go deep rather than broad. In the chess sense, in a match, you cover very few areas but you squeeze the water out of a rock,” said Anand.

“Again, in a match, you get this feeling of being watched. You are thinking of no one but him and he is thinking of no one but you. That is the element that comes across in a match. If you don’t beat the guy, you are not going to win. In a tournament, you can make up the difference by beating a third player. In a match, you can’t win by half a point.

At the end of the day, you are playing chess and not the format. One should not think too much about it. If the stakes are high, you should be able to prove yourself in any format.

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