Anand: Chess players gossip too!

By M.S. Unnikrishnan

Chess is a serious mind game, but it’s great fun if you play it the Viswanathan Anand way! Anand says chess champions are no morons who sit glued to the 64-square board, for hours together, till they outwit their opponents.

The great man is modest to the core. The swollen-headed cricketers and sportspersons with bloated egos should take a leaf out of Anand’s book of modesty. Anand is not affected by fame or wealth.

He has a great sense of humour, is friendly, amiable and accessible. Anand, who lives in Collano Medano, Spain, was once named among the 40 most important people in Spain!

Yet, he projects the image of a simple man on whose handsome shoulders sit fame and success lightly.

He says he gets that “great feeling” whenever he returns to his roots in India, and chess, of course, has been a great binding factor, which gives him that “universality”, not many sportspersons in India can boast of.

“Chess”, Anand notes, “is great fun” and the players do not just huddle together and play the game, but also move around, interact with other players, and discuss everything under the sun. “Chess players gossip, discuss football, women...the works. We don’t sit there for seven hours (and play chess),” he says.

It was diligent and painstaking hard work which took Anand to his present exalted status. His mother Sushila Viswanathan, from whom Anand learned the basic lessons of chess at the young age of six, used to keep a dairy of his matches, which helped him analyse his games, weed out the mistakes, and chart out new strategy.


Anand, who turned 34 on December 11, 2003, has played competitive chess for the past 20 years, and has been way ahead of his times and peers.

Anand is famous for his lightening speed, and the ability to see and read the game far ahead of his opponents, besides on-board intuition. No wonder, he had earned the sobriquet “Boy Wonder” at the age of 14, and became the youngest Indian national champion at the age of 16.

Anand enjoys playing different varieties of chess, especially the advanced variety, wherein computers are at hand for calculations and database searches.

However, Anand cautions against getting addicted to compute chess, which, he feels, can stifle the human brain’s capacity to innovate.

Anand, like any other top sports star, advocates the need to keep oneself physically and mentally fit, with regular exercises and a balanced and healthy diet. “It’s an aspect I give my full attention to,” he notes. “It’s important to be physically fit. It makes a difference in winning,” he asserts.

Anand says kids take to chess “pretty quickly. It’s very addictive. There is this element of competitiveness.

The bid to outfox your opponent...” His parting shot is to keep the game “interesting, with good opening, interesting moves...”

Original Article here

Category: Articles , Chess