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COVER
STORY: CHESS
The
Genius of Anand
How India's
greatest player prepared, plotted and captured the elusive title of world
chess champion
By
Sharda Ugra in Teheran
Teheran's
Mabna Convention Centre is A functional, undistinguished place. The windows
are too high to allow panoramic views of the city rolling down from the
Al Borz mountains and the walls hold too many echoes of business seminars
and academic conferences. This Christmas eve it contained a quite unusual
buzz.
 |
| Anand
swarmed by his fans after his victory in Tehran |
The whispers
rustled in from those among the 400 people sitting at the back of the
room. Groups of students with their scribbling, fathers with miniature
chess boards on their knees, even a handful of women, swathed in black,
craning their necks to get a look at the end of the hall where two men
sat across a table.
The Spaniard
whose name was Alexei Shirov had spent a good portion of the past hour
holding his head like a man with a migraine. He looked up, wearily shook
his head and grimaced. He had barely stretched out his hand before the
other man, moving as quickly as he plays, got out of his chair, shook
hands with the most restrained of smiles. The crowd in the room began
to clap and surge towards the table in one great, grey wave. In another
time not so long ago, they would all have been arrested for indulging
in a sport banned by the Iranian Revolution, but on Christmas eve they
celebrated shatranj and one of its grandest masters.
 Of
all the chess halls in all the towns in all the world, redemption for
Vishwanathan Anand finally came swaggering into this one.
To
be world chess champion is to be the smartest guy on the planet not counting
Nobel Prize-winning scientists. But to get there genius alone is not enough.
Neither are preparation, tactics or mere desire. In 1995, Anand had all
of that in plenty when he faced off against Garry Kasparov on the 107th
Floor of the World Trade Centre in New York for the title of PCA World
Chess Champion. He had most of it in 1998 when he played Anatoly Karpov
in Lausanne for the title of fide World Champion. Still, he couldn't prise
Russian hands off the crown and it was then said that what he didn't have
was the stomach for a fight. It's a quick and convenient theory, but it
does not quite add up because this brainy middle-class boy from Chennai
has broken every barrier known to the Indian chess player to just get
to the two Ks.
Now two
years after Karpov, he has handed out the most decisive defeat in the
116-year-old history of world championship chess-3.5 to 0.5 points-to
Shirov and is the first Indian past what is a very inaccessible post.
Now he thinks he has some answers to why it's taken him as long as it
has. "In those earlier matches I was kicked by how far I was going.
Wow, I am in the quarters ... This time I really had the feeling that
I've done this so many times, it's boring as hell, it's time to finish
it. I knew from experience that going 95 per cent of the way still leaves
you with this enormous emptiness. If you've climbed 95 per cent of the
mountain every time and never seen the peak, it's just not the same."
He laughs, "Now it's just nice to look around the peak. The view
is great!"
Team Anand
is having a laugh not just because he won $660,000 (Rs 2.97 crore), the
highest single prize-money cheque ever picked up by an Indian sportsperson.
The world title has validated Anand's belief in his own powers and the
pressures of professional chess are now tossed aside like an old cloak.
In the two years after Karpov, Anand has enjoyed ripping runs of form
and survived slumps. It's what he did with them which has given new maturity
and forged new steel into his game. Today he doesn't consider his title
defeats to Kasparov and Karpov as particularly traumatic. They are mere
tactical data. "I'm very surgical in my memory and forget bad experiences
very quickly. Within three days of the match with Karpov you could have
asked me about it and I would have been laughing. I just empty things
like that from my recycle bin!" Jokes are fine but on the board,
business is business. His game now is a creative force made up of equal
parts ruthlessness and obstinacy.
In these
two years, backed by known natural gifts-the capacity to grasp and calculate
positions at high-speed, a near-photographic memory and a "feel"
of the board-he has deepened his understanding of chess in the boring
old-fashioned way. Playing, winning, losing, working long hours with his
Spanish support team and doing all the study that can be done through
chess computers. In his teens he was the flashy attacking "Lightning
Kid" who could rack up 40 moves in 15 minutes but today he's being
"discovered" as the best defender in the game. Coach Elizar
Ubilava is bemused. "He was always an excellent defender but I would
say his survival instinct is very strong. I cannot think what comes first,
defending his positions or playing a fast attacking game. He can solve
positions that other players would find impossible to escape." Ubilava,
Anand's 50-year-old neighbour in Spain, has worked with him since 1994,
with Pablo San Segundo, 30, a friend and part-time coach joining in occasionally.
Anand's
survival instincts work off the board to ensure he does not repeat mistakes.
On it, they come into play whether through pure improvisational brilliance
or bland old bluff. In 1994, after losing a Candidates quarter-final to
Gata Kamsky in Sanghinagar when he needed only a win, Anand thrashed the
precocious teenager in their next meeting. He had taken time out on the
rest day to distribute prizes at a school and, whether that mattered or
not, says he has refused social engagements during events ever since,
discovering the importance of saying no. Watching Nigel Short drift away
after being beaten by Kasparov in the 1994 world championship final, Anand
shouldered his own loss to the mighty Russian the following year, and
was back to the circuit inside two months. These decisions are the smallest
bricks but they have added to the fortress that is Anand's game today.
On the board
he remains restless, dynamic: in Game 3 of the final against Shirov, Anand
raced through the first 25 moves playing, to all eyes, from memory. He
wasn't. He was having one of his days when, according to Ubilava, "adrenaline
invades his brain and he sees everything clearly". Anand thinks it
is his version of the Zone. "You see the position and the moves clearly,
your hand and mind are in total agreement. Then there is no point thinking
for the sake of thinking." San Segundo says, "Anand surprises
me all the time by suddenly doing things we may never have discussed."
Shirov, both Spaniards agree, had no chance in the final-not only was
he too cocky, Anand was playing at another level, communicating with his
craft in a language Shirov couldn't speak.
Then there's
the bluff: in Dos Hermanos 1999, world No. 12 Russian Peter Svidler offered
Anand a draw only because the Indian looked inscrutable even though he
was in an inferior position. Wife Aruna says, "I can make out when
he's struggling and for me it's the worst thing to just sit through him
suffering." Svidler couldn't tell: convinced that the Indian had
hatched an elaborate mode of escape, he threw up his hands, said, "Peace,
man," and let victory go. How, Svidler demanded of Anand later, could
he "radiate calm" even when in trouble?
Pg.
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