Anand Interview Transcript Location: Chennai Date: 26th December, 2008.

You started off playing tournaments at the age of 8 or so? Yes. I would guess its probably even sooner. I learnt roughly when I was six. Probably for the first six months I was at home, then joined a club, so very likely my first tournament was round about that age. At that time how was the chess scene? Where there any tournaments around to take part in at regular intervals? Sure, we had a reasonably good chess scene. We had some very enthusiastic organisers if you like. Some guys who got together as a club. I remember they used to come there practically every day. I remember seeing many of them for years on end. So it was a small circle but a very passionate and committed circle. We still had not even gotten our first grandmaster at that stage. I think we only had one International Master when I started. Mr Aaron Mr Aaron. By 1980 we started to get to four. So it was a very small world. But I had enough chances to play. I remember at the Tal chess club, at one point those guys decided they were going to just organize a tournament every week. For practice it was fantastic. I could go to the club every week. Every weekend they had the tournament. I would go and play the whole tournament. It was good, because this is the best way to grow. You were 8-9 years old? Were there other kids your age? Or were you the only kid in the club? There was a little break. I think I was 8, 8 and a half when we left for the Philippines. I spent a year and a few months there and came back sometime in 1980, when I was ten. When I got here I started playing chess again. I think 1980-81 was when I started playing tournaments every weekend practically. I would maybe play 30 tournaments a year like this. The whole of 1981 went like this. Nothing (much) really, in the sense that I had the habit of going to the club for playing blitz games. These five-minute games. Every Monday evening, Thursday evening, second Saturdays and Sundays, the club functioned so that was my schedule to go to the club.

There is a story about your time there winner stays Exactly.

To go back to the Philippines, is it fair to say that was a critical year because at that time Philippines had better chess infrastructure? I think that is correct. The Philippines had just organized a world championship match between Karpov and Korchnoi. So at that stage they were further down that road. They had a very active federation. I remember even they had a TV program on chess in those days. Every day between 1 and 2 in the afternoon. So when I was at school my mother would write down the games and the puzzle at the end. When I came back from school she would show me what had happened. Just to show you the level. I also remember joining a club there and going to play very often. My interest in chess deepened in the Philippines and by the time I got back I was pretty much hooked.

In the beginning was it just Ok Chess is a fun activity. You also played tennis. When did you think, Im really good at this and should stick with it? Was it a conscious decision or did you get into it gradually? Well tennis I really didnt get past the coaching camps and that sort of thing. I never got into tournaments. So very fast my chess was much further ahead then my tennis. I still remember going to these tennis camps in the morning, with all these other kids. It just drove me nuts that at 5:30 in the morning I couldnt even play tennis. They would make you run around the courts a few times (laughs) and then you got four forehands, four backhands and then you were off, the next group came in. I liked the chess scene simply much more because I got to play as much as I wanted and it was more my style. But I was playing lots of other things, I was playing badminton. My father was in the railways so in the Railway Club we had badminton, table tennis. I would play with all the other railway kids. I had a mixture of other sports. But none of them came close. Already by the second or third year I had gone further in chess than in any of the other games because I was playing tournaments.

Did you watch the Karpov-Korchnoi match in the Philippines? No, we arrived in the Philippines about a month after it had finished. We went to see the hall where it took place. I didnt know that then of course, but nine years later I would win the world junior title in the same hall. We went to Baguio. It is a lovely hillside resort. While we were there, my parents took me to this place, see this is where the Karpov-Korchnoi match took place.

Did you subconsciously believe even then that you could take chess as a career? Probably yes. I never saw anything else as my career. The moments when you would hesitate, is first in the Xth standard, because you need to get a group of your choice, and then XIIth standard when you are going to university. Till then, you could put off the decision and pretend that both streams were going okay, but what I wanted to do clearly was chess. The reason I might not have taken chess would be if I hadnt got the breakthroughs and you begin to weigh your career options. Can I make a living playing chess? and all that stuff. But for me at those critical moments I had incredible results. Around 9th standard I had very good breaks, then again in the 10th standard I had a very good year. Got my International Master title a bit earlier. So that was good. And in the 12th standard just after I had finished, I got my world junior title and the grandmaster title within the space of a few months. At those moments I might have hesitated I did not need to hesitate at all, the choice became clear. But I decided to go to college anyway and do my B.Com just to keep my options open. I had a feeling that as Grandmaster it was possible to play chess for a living. I felt somehow I wanted to go to college simply because I didnt want to miss that part of life, I didnt want to have never gone to college. After I finished college it became clear, I was already #5 in the world. I had very very good results. I would basically say from the age of six unless I saw very good reasons not to play chess, it was what I wanted to do. There were no logical arguments against it.

In the 70s, Philippines had Torre. Eventually India overtook Philippines as a chess power. Can we speculate that it was because Philippines didnt have an Anand, a star-player who could capture the peoples imagination? Can we say that that is why you were able to start a chess revolution in India? I think that is possible. It must be said that Torres effect on the Philippines was very similar. There was a boom. It petered out after a while. But Torre had the same effect and he is, I am guessing, 15-16 years senior to me. So that effect also started much earlier in the Philippines, around 1974. The Philippines was a very strong Asian chess country. Now its less so but they still field a decent team. Clearly no one has come along to replace the stature of Eugene. In India it has come further along. India has several players in the top 100, one is in the top 50. We have a womens game going. It is more broadbased in India. The situation is comparable, they started much earlier.

Do you need stars to crop up at constant intervals to prop up the scene or can the infrastructure keep it going? I think it is both. It is not really one or the other. They feed off each other. If now, a very strong Filipino player emerged, there is already a base on which he can build on. I think you need both. You need to have the infrastructure, but then you also need, I mean

children look to lots of sports and when you have somebody they can follow they go for that. In Spain, tennis and F1 have got so big recently. You can see the effect literally from the day Alonso started competing in F1 and its profile as a sport in Spain. If he were to disappear I dont think that F1 will last there. You can see this in Germany, after Schumi, F1 is decreasing fast. You need a constant feed of good players to keep that alive. To fire peoples imagination.

One very important factor is age-group tournaments. You need that conveyor belt of U-10, U-12, U-14 so you can keep going up. What was your experience? Did you go past the age groups very quickly? Well in those days we only had U-16 and U-20. Subsequently they found the need to break it up so much because what was happening was that GMs were becoming so strong at the age of 18 they were skipping the best years of the world junior. Or maybe they became grandmasters at 14 then people became afraid they would never play a world junior. At this point I would say Under-20 is not that important, there are 17-year olds like Carlsen who are not going to participate. Its still a very impressive result but it is not quite what it used to be. Once upon a time people like Spassky, Kasparov, Karpov, myself we all won world junior championships at some stage. Till about 1990 that was a real gold-plated achievement. It still is good, but Kramnik was already so strong at 17 he didnt play in the final stages of the world junior, he didnt win one. So there you already have to look at their sub-junior results, which is U-16. Now you need to see peoples U-14, U-12 and thats where you make out what they are doing. Surya Ganguly for instance played many other people like Aronian, Grischuk at the U-14, U-16 stages. Now they are all at the top of world chess. I think the earlier you start the better your chances are. The system maybe producing very young players, eventually they become senior stars, it is almost unheard of that someone starts at 16 and has any realistic chance of getting to the top.

In cricket you can see a very clear path. You play well, you get into the zonals, the Ranji and so on. The entire emphasis is on getting into the Indian team. Once you get in, the system takes over. When you were starting off in the 1980s, how much of that infrastructure was there? Basically the goal was to become grandmaster. I think there were some support systems in place in India. There were a few, lets say patrons or well-wishers who would sort of look after chess players, who would give them employment when they became an International Master. When you became a grandmaster that is when they paid you to take part in tournaments. International Master, some events would give you some compensation but essentially you knew you had to become a grandmaster to have this chance. I had a double bonus because I became world junior champion and grandmaster I got invited to some very prestigious events like the Corus tournament, Wijk aan Zee. That was a very big break for me. And when I won that, everything opened up. I started

getting lots of good invitations. That was basically what you needed to do. The grandmaster was the place to be. Now there are far more grandmasters than they used to be in 1987 so now you need to be probably 2650 before you can have the system take over. At my time that was 2500 or 2550.

Have you thought of another way of making the chess economy run? Till now people here have been very cautious of taking sport as a career. Chess players are supposed to be of above average intelligence so they presumably have more career options. How would an ideal chess economy look like? I think in general its a fairly good system. We have tournaments at every level. I think once you make your mark, some way or the other, either you become the best player of your country or you become one of the best in the world. In the case of Russia you could be number 8 in Russia and could still have some work to do before youd be the first choice. I think the system as it is now, as long as it stable, we are back to the system of having only one world championship; that is very good for the game. And now lots of new countries are turning up. There is a Norwegian, Magnus Carlsen who is 2nd in the world, there is an Italian, there is an Armenian, there is a Ukrainian. So already the top ten is looking very diverse and nice. Which is a very interesting face to present to the world. So I think the system is healthy. Now if we keep the stability of the world championship and grow it from here it will be very healthy. I think the argument still holds, when you get to the age when you are in college you may be very good for chess but you may not be cut out for it. It is not just that if you can play chess you should. You also have to want that kind of lifestyle, which has travelling, playing tournaments. It is a different kind of lifestyle, some like it, some dont. I mean there are chess players who did it for 4-5 years, they really loved chess and then they said they couldnt take the travelling any more and wanted to get into different things. That is such a personal decision you cant really influence that further. But you make the set-up interesting and go from there.

Going back to the 80s, there was a competition - who would become the first Indian GM? There was you and there where other promising players like GM Barua. Can you describe those years? It was really a mental barrier. Round about 1982 we had this idea that, okay, at some point some Indian has to become a grandmaster. It just seemed so elusive. It was a big block. Somehow when I was playing, if the GM norm was 7, I got to 6 several times or 6.5 even. It seemed that ultimate half a point was very tricky. I had a conversation with an arbiter in the UK once. He was telling me actually when you finally become a GM it will be very smooth. Youll keep on missing for many months and at one point you will become strong enough you will get it easily, you might even overshoot. So dont fret about it. I had gone through three attempts, the first in Calcutta, the second in London. Id missed it by half a point each time. I needed to win the last game in every case.

I won the world junior, which gave me one norm. Then in Delhi I made it with a round to spare. Not exactly a round to spare but I just needed a draw in the last round and thats much easier. In Coimbatore, I even overshot it. I needed a draw in the penultimate round. When it finally happened I seemed to just sweep past. So its clear that I had become much stronger while trying for the GM title. It is funny that the first two or three tournaments after becoming a GM I couldnt make the GM norm. When you become a Grandmaster you lose this target in front of you and suddenly you have no idea what you are doing or what you are playing for. By the end of that year there was a deep feeling inside that I had to aim for something much higher otherwise it is easy to drift. But it was a big deal. I remember when I got the world junior title and grandmaster I was everywhere in the Press because it was really seen as a big big deal. Finally we get one grandmaster in this intellectual game, that sort of a thing.

20:00 Forget becoming a GM there were very few Indians who had actually beaten a GM in a tournament game. There was Mr Aaron who had beaten a Grandmaster Max Euwe Your first win was against GM Mestel in 1985. Can you tell us about that? For me it was big because first time I had beaten a grandmaster. Of course subsequently I was beating grandmasters quite easily so it is funny to think of that as a block. Your point is essentially correct, the very fact that you remember that you beat a GM means we hadnt beaten many uptil that point. Baruas win over Korchnoi, we spoke about it for some years. My win against Mestel. In the early 80s first of all it was a big barrier to become a grandmaster so as a result you tended to look up to people who had become grandmasters with a certain amount of awe and it was difficult to break through. In 1986 I was beating grandmasters very regularly. That stopped being the achievement; it had to be getting a GM norm, because you knew one of them could be having a bad tournament. Your achievement had to be winning the tournament or making a GM norm.

Again looking at the scene in India in the 1980s, in the pre-liberalization era. I think you had trouble travelling abroad for tournaments. Can you tell us about those times? We had this system because you needed to get foreign exchange, you first needed the federation to approve your trip or pass on your application to the sports ministry. Sports ministry will sanction it. I dont remember exactly what the procedure was. From the sports ministry we went to civil aviation with the sports ministrys approval and they would issue an Air India ticket. Once you got that ticket you went to the Reserve Bank and got your foreign exchange approval. Then there was this one branch in the city, of

SBI or Thomas Cook, somewhere in Delhi, where you could buy your foreign exchange. I mean we are even not talking about giving you foreign exchange (laughs), you had to buy your foreign exchange and we would loop through all this. I remember always at some really late hour because the ticket will be issued only at 5 in the evening. At 9 O Clock we would go to this one Thomas Cook, which would be open late, get our foreign exchange and the flight would be at 11:30. This was funny because, even I think to fly to Colombo there where people who went to Delhi to get their foreign exchange sanctioned, did the loop and then came back. Sometimes it happened that we would arrive late in tournaments because the sanction didnt come quickly enough. Basically we would spend two days floating around in these various ministries in Delhi. It is a story I cannot tell to anyone anymore because India has liberalized so much that you cant explain this. Essentially now, given the possibility, if you dont go its because you dont have the money not because (of the regulations). These regulations were quite absurd.

Given all this, if you had the choice would you prefer starting your career now? I wasnt unhappy. To be fair, the sports ministry did give us a lot of support. They always gave us some support to going to important tournaments, one important tour a year and the Olympiads. If we qualified for any world championship again they approved that very easily. FERA was a nuisance but it wasnt directed against chess. The sports ministry supported chess a lot for the results it had achieved till then. They had to bankroll other sports as well. In that sense, the support structure was good. I dont really have that feeling that I should have started somewhere else. Clearly if I had been born in the Soviet Union I would have been trained in a different way. Because I was the best Indian, that had a certain cachet as well. Many organisers invited me first because I was the number one ranked Indian player so they had a nice Asian player to bring to the tournament. I would have to be the 3rd best Russian or 4th best Russian before I got an invitation. So the 8th best guy might have had better training than me but I think in the end the breaks even out. It is really a question of what you do with the chances you have. I managed to do that very well and getting my GM title during college was also very nice because it took the pressure off me in college. I went through my B.Com but mentally I knew I was not going to be an accountant. Were you a star in college? Did people point out and say, Oh there is Anand? Yes and they would always want me to turn up for the culturals. They would parade me around so they could pick up girls (laughs). The principal and all of them were very affectionate. The vice-principal would ask me, Why are you coming to college? We have given you all the leave you want. I would say, no, no I just want to meet the guys. It had gotten to the point where there was very little resistance in missing classes as long as I turned up for the exams.

You have mentioned the Soviet Union. In retrospect your success seems incredible because the Soviets had a very comprehensive system in place for spotting and then training that talent, not only in chess but other sports as well. They also had worldbeating players so you could get practice partners. Apart from the Soviets there is you and there is Fischer. Fischer at least had the advantage of coming from the US which is a rich country. You didnt have that advantage either. Do you think you would be an even stronger player if you had gone through the rigorous training of the Soviet school of chess? No, I believe that my days in the Tal club were more important than getting training. Nowadays you see lots of kids like Magnus Carlsen who didnt come through some training program. They came through playing chess on the Internet. Instead of going to a physical club they played 40 games a day on a server. You can see the results. You can see the tactical reflexes they have. Training does help; it has its role, not to demean it. I dont think its necessary at that stage. I would almost say that it is the inspiration for what we are doing at the NIIT Mind Champions Academy. We are trying to introduce them to the game and get them playing with each other. We think thats 90% of the work. If you reach a certain level, its so easy nowadays and technology has bridged the gap we had in the 80s with information and so on. In the 80s, for instance with the Chess Informant, we would wait 4 months, 6 months after it was published. If some friend happened to travel to the Philippines for a tournament, he could buy it even quicker there and you had this advantage for three weeks before your opponents. And you had lots of the latest development you could use on them. These days of watching games live and instant downloading of entire bases its hard to imagine that world. Technology has levelled the field quite a lot. There is for instance no big disadvantage, to being an Australian in chess. If you get good, the breaks are there. Its very easy to play anyone you want. For someone in a remote part of the world as long as you have an Internet connection, you can practice, interact with people and get to the initial stages. Now its just a question of whether you get good enough. Not to dismiss training and tournaments but this is a big help. Thats why in the academy it is important for me that they simply begin to learn to play. They play a few games with their friends in school and they get into this habit of playing often. I dont feel training was a problem (for me). When I was preparing for the candidates matches, then yes, training was very important. If you go into this, with Oh Ive played a few blitz games then you are walking into it a bit innocently. There you need somebody to guide you through some real-world strategies, what your opponents might do. (Training) is not necessary at an early stage. I dont think it was a disadvantage at all.

The Soviets had the House of Pioneers. Is the Mind Champions Academy something on those lines? You want to widen the talent pool to see who has that ability?

It is very similar. These pioneer houses had one man. Kids who had the opportunity to come there would have chess sets, the atmosphere, the infrastructure was created that if they wanted to play they could play. Russia didnt need to push its kids very much, they did so naturally. This mans job was to sort of be an enabler, to help things happen, and if someone was interesting, sort of point him out. Very basic level and then they would take it to further stages. Our idea is very similar to this whole concept. We hope to have someone in each academy who is maybe very passionate about the game and starts the ball rolling. The idea is not to get into coaching. Thats for someone else. Our idea simply is that millions of kids learn to play the game. We are approaching it from that side so if in the next few years I can grow this from a student base of 2.5 million to lets say 10 million and the number of kids who are taking part is 170,000. If I can build that to say half a million. Those are the numbers I am looking forward to, that is initial coaching here, we get them involved with each other, some monitoring can be done. The idea is not get into one-onones. The idea is to get a lot of kids into the game. Automatically that is wonderful for the sport as well. The idea is that playing chess will help them to spend their time more productively and also maybe improve their academic skills a little bit.

You are getting a spin-off because you are increasing the potential audience for chess as well. Exactly. The biggest hurdle for chess as a spectator sport is that people dont know the rules. In fact the thing isnt that it cant be a spectator game but there is this initial hurdle, if you dont know the rules you have no clue what is going on. You cant even see an object moving. That is the biggest hurdle. That is why this project is exciting me. If 10 million people have somehow come into contact with the game at some stage, just learnt the rules, then you know one day, even if they have not taken chess seriously, they may want to watch it and obviously that is a huge opportunity for the sport. So the biggest hurdle will simply be to get them in contact with the game. Clearly we are still very regional. Chess was always big in Tamil Nadu and the South. It had a foothold in Bengal and Maharasthra as well. These were the strongholds of chess. The North-East, the North generally had almost no real chess going. Here there is a levelling effect, we are actually teaching chess in several areas where chess never had any foothold. And that is also very exciting to me.

Before moving on to the role of Information Technology (IT) in your career I would like to ask you what was your first chess book? A couple of chess books. My sister bought me a collection of chess openings. A very basic, (but) in those days a very highly regarded book by Horowitz. Clearly it has been updated a lot.

Then I think I got Capablancas Chess Fundamentals. And most importantly, several books on opening traps and swindles. It is like, you know, how to make a quick buck. How to win games quickly by tricking your opponent here and there. There was 1001 Opening Miniatures, Opening traps and swindles, how to avoid them. They are just giving you a lot of examples like that. Those were the kind of books I read. Then in the Philippines I started winning some prizes so again I picked out game collections of players or these kinds of books with lots of traps and titbits. I didnt buy too much heavy material, I didnt get into Nimzowitsch (smiles).

Can you name any personal favourites? I liked this book by Capablanca, Chess Fundamentals. I still do. I read it still. Some of the examples he gives I can still recognize. I built my career on them. Clearly matters are not as simple as he made it out to be. For many years I would head for (certain) positions knowing that Capablanca said it was good for you, or certain structures. It influences your style in profound ways. I liked another book by Hans Kmoch, Pawn power in chess. And a book on Paul Keres.

Getting back to the 80s in India. One feature we see in developing economies is that Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) are not well respected which is good, because it confers a big advantage. For example you had the whole Xeroxing revolution where expensive books would be photocopied and available at low costs. Does weak IPR help such countries? Yes, very much. You can see it in many many fields. At a certain level, IPR is simply not feasible. For someone who just wants to get in contact with the game, to expect him to buy heavy tomes is just out of the world. For sure there was a lot of photocopying. Chess Informants were amongst the most photocopied books. Nowadays I think nobody even tries to copyright games. Games are common property, and you cant really copyright annotations. The chess world is evolving to a stage where they do a lot of video or the magazines have very interesting stories. It is not so attractive to go around photocopying page after page. Also I dont see people photocopy 800 things in these photocopy stores. Now they just have it in their house or they have moved on, I dont know which. Of course 20 years ago people used to go to shops and there would be this one copy of a book, which would become a stack. Clearly these copyright violations helped chess develop in new areas, new countries. Subsequently many of these people buy a normal Informant or New in Chess. I suspect that is the case in most forms of IP as well. In the beginning it probably makes sense to have a trial version, which is completely free. You can see in software they have moved to that, they give you a trial version with the basic stuff and try to sell you the advanced features, which are not so easy to replicate. Nowadays you have to put something out that is really special. If you make video

annotations there is still the danger they can copy the CD but you can put some sort of a lock or simply put it out on the web and figure out some other ways of making money. Charge for lessons perhaps. In chess generally the moves are free. There were brief efforts to see if moves could be copyrighted. Its basically impossible. Its so easy to transmit information, I can just tell you he played e4, no way it is workable. In chess, information has always been free. I guess Informant has suffered. Maybe in the long run it will help them.

India is doing fairly well in shooting and tennis. Generally the infrastructure costs for both is very high. What about chess? Are there any hidden costs? It is basically quite low. I think in the beginning you need chessboard and coins. You also need someone nearby physically who can play with you. As you said if I just put a chessboard and coins in a city where there not that many chessplayers chances are the interest in the start will wither. Once you get a PC, that is it. The good news is you dont need to buy something exclusively for chess; any family PC is more or less fine. I would say that is all the infrastructure you need to start. At some point you would like to join a like-minded community so its helpful to join an academy or find something in your city, interact with other kids and find someway of measuring yourself. Otherwise you have no idea where you stand relative to anything else. Once you join the right circle, learning becomes very easy. If you are good you can progress very easily. Nowadays a PC and an Internet connection and you are almost all set. So you dont need to be a person (of wealth) or invest a lot. Its very easy you dont even have to leave your house. In that sense right now it is the easiest sport to get in. 39:30 In a sport like shooting where Abhinav Bindra has got the gold. Is that enough to get others into the fray? For example when you became a GM and everyone started getting inspired. What are the factors which made chess a favoured sport?

I think someone like Bindra gives an initial burst of interest. And people are excited. And then it is upto the sport itself to have some sort of follow-up. A well-organised sport will able to follow up easily and these people who will make enquiries in the first week. Its almost like going to a web-page, if its nice and the information is available easily and you dont have to navigate, most people will stay and find what they are looking for and you can deal with them. But if its complex and you are giving too many things the interest can vanish very quickly also. Bindra, after he won the Olympic (gold), ok well, I dont know the scene in shooting very well but extrapolating from chess, I would say the main thing in chess is that we already had a good structure at least in Tamil Nadu but all over India you had someone in the local city. Clubs were already there. So if someone picked up the phone directory or called someone he found out very quickly and went to the club where there were people playing. In those days if you deliver well then they will stick around.

At every stage you have to make it easy for people and the atmosphere has to be congenial. I think its good that now there are not too many smoky places in chess. One of the things that put me off enormously in several clubs was that smoking was permitted and I couldnt deal with it. If I was young now and wanted to get into chess I would probably go to clubs which were non-smoking. The Tal club was a very clean club, the lighting was good, the equipment was good, the setting was nice, it was a very peaceful area. I think all that helps. So the sport also has to work. Its not that you can just sit back and people will flood in. They will try but if you are not able to deliver they will lose interest and you will have lose this surge. I dont think any sport can just sit back and say they will come and play. You have to make it attractive for new people to join and welcome them to the fold. In chess that is the case. I would say broadly speaking if someone hasnt found anything in their city I can still tell them do you have a PC at home, do you have an internet connection, go to this chess site and you are all set. Just a few steps you have to do and you can start playing this evening. Thats very important, if you give them some plan which takes a month, the child might lose interest. The next big thing will be on the news and it will pass very quickly.

Do you think sports association in India need to take a cue from the BCCI? Learn from them on how to build a sport from the grassroots. Or was it the inherent nature of cricket that it became popular? I dont even know if it is a thing with the federations. Clearly the federations can learn from the BCCI. Here what I am talking about is simply I mean a child wanting to play cricket doesnt go to the BCCI, he goes to his local school or some playground nearby. Thats the kind of replication I am talking about. You would not need to deal with the Indian chess federation or even the city chess federation for a couple of years till you really want to get out and start playing events. And word of mouth, if you have a friend who is playing he can take you through. That sort of thing has to be good. I would say infrastructure-wise it is the easiest sport to play right now. Most people who live in the city have Internet connection or some access to it, you are really all set from there. Its very easy to get in and play a bit and the next thing is, you are playing people all over the world, and its easy to find someone of your level so you dont get too intimidated in the beginning. Those things are excellent in chess now.

You would need a certain critical mass. For example in Russia you have chess sets in public spaces, in parks and people just come and play. The base is enormous. Do you think we can achieve that in India, that kind of infrastructure where anyone who wants to play can get to play? Yes, even when I was in Chennai it was pretty easy to find a chess community. I mean it is not like my parents spent weeks looking. My sister drove by one day, there was a big sign called Chess club, that is how I got into it and I stayed. I think in parts of India we

have had that infrastructure for quite some time, of getting people into the game and helping them. Hopefully with the Mind Champions Academy we will actually have gotten children, in all parts of India you will have that same experience, that somebody in your town will, probably there will be an association, at least you can call the Mind Champions Academy and find out how to get started. That prospect is there. If you see the explosion in chess in India the last ten years, clearly all these kids have found their way to chess. I would say that is pretty excellent.

It is quite interesting that NIIT, a private company is doing all this. In earlier years you had the state model, the government doing it. Is this a sign in the changes in the times? It fits in with their model as well, they are an education company. The thing that triggered all this off was a conversation where we realized that chess-playing kids, there were studies showing that they exhibited better academic performance in schools, and truancy levels had dropped. So clearly they were finding ways to use their idle time better by playing chess. It gave them something to focus their energy on. That is what kick-started the whole idea. So I thought it was a natural fit that an education company got into it. Again we are not trying to coach them in chess, we are simply trying to introduce it. So at that level, at an educational level it makes sense. Nowadays you cant really go asking the government to do everything for you. Private companies will have to be a big part of it. I know a lot of companies where if a few employees are playing chess, they will allow them to form a chessclub. A lot of IT companies in India will do that. So it comes back to critical mass. We are slowly attaining that critical mass. Definitely we are not anywhere near cricket but the situation has improved. Our results are very good Yes and slowly all those kids who played ten years ago, the ones who didnt continue in chess are now sitting across the private sector and they are still turning up on weekends playing tournaments here or there. Slowly we are getting that first wave going through the system. I am optimistic. A lot of work has to be done because every sport is competing nowadays vigorously for attention but at least we are in with a chance.

Is there some strength associated with being a niche sport? Something which not everyone can play, something only for the intellectual elite. Is that being diluted? I think it is still seen as an intellectual sport. I dont know how cool works. It is pretty random. In India it is seen as sort of cool to play chess now. My son is studying chess, we are getting a trainer, that sort of thing, I hear it so often. It has found its way into the

mainstream. That clearly is the case. So it is very important to hold on to that. Because so many kids learn chess nowadays, we need to keep that going.

You interact a lot with young players. Apart from chess skills do they also ask you for career advice? Sure. It is more about, very often they ask me how to concentrate a little, tips to play chess and so on. Once in a while you get a question on career prospects and so on. My honest answer is In school you shouldnt be asking me this question. I would never suggest to anyone that they drop school for chess. First of all even if you can make it in chess, your social skills need to be developed there. At least you should have done your 12th standard! (Laughs). And then take a call, thats fine, it is up to you. You will probably be an International Master at least at this stage before you might decide to take the plunge and skip college. Generally I think students shouldnt think of those things in school. At least I cannot advice anyone who is thinking along those lines. Times have changed, but in my time I was not thinking about it in school so (school) was very important.

When was it that chess was financially supporting you? Pretty much after becoming a GM I was comfortable. Nowadays it is not automatic after a grandmaster, but as I said 2650 you have a good chance of getting yourself. In my case when I became a Grandmaster, life stabilized. Also because organizers invited me, I no longer had to deal with Mr FERA (laughs). That also was a big help. Suddenly I could just go for a tournament on my own and there were no hassles. I was being given a hotel, a fee to play and things like that. That was a big big relief, which then allows you to focus on the next stage of becoming a candidate and going for the world championship cycle.

Can we say that the moment you get appearance fees that is a very big step up? Yes, you can clearly say that. You just feel differently when you can just turn up at a tournament, well rested, you didnt spend the last three days getting approvals and so on. Maybe even psychologically it makes you feel very special. For the first time you feel really good, you have just arrived, ready to play, you might have spent the last few days actually looking at chess. I got used to it, sure, but from 1988 till 1991 were very good years to play chess for me. Even though I hadnt broken in completely, it was not like I was running a race against time or something. I was having a good life.

When was the first time you started using a computer in your chess preparation?

1988. It was a computer I had here at home. End of 1988 I bought a laptop. To call it a notebook would be an insult (laughs). It was one of these ridiculous things where the screen was this big (gestures) but the stand holding the screen was this fat. And 20 megabytes of hard-disk space. Megabytes? Or maybe even kilobytes. Im not sure. Absolutely absurd. Looking back now that is how I started. But it was very useful because suddenly you could say I have all my information here so you dont need to carry a couple of books and your luggage became a bit lighter. And you could search for your opponents games very fast. Before I played someone, I could spend the morning looking at all his games and get a quick feel. I would say I was there right in the very beginning. The first database appeared in 1986 but even then it wasnt really useful. Maybe Kasparov beat me by a few months. He was world champion already so he might have beaten me by a few months to it. But I was there at the very beginning. So I have used computers from the time they appeared in chess.

What gave you the idea of using a computer? You heard about it. You heard there was this new company selling databases. At some point I went and met that person who was selling databases. I met him in London. And he said, Why dont you come over home and visit me in Hamburg, and we can take it from there. So I went and visited him in Hamburg. This was Mr Friedel? Friedel, yeah. I visited him in Hamburg. A couple of months earlier he had sent a bag through a friend who was coming to India. I opened the bag, there were several diskettes. So I stuck the floppy diskette in, it installed the chess program. The other one had some games. So it the first time I could start using the computer I had bought a few months earlier. When I visited his house he explained how to use the program. He still makes fun of me. At the beginning I was totally proficient in using the mouse upside down. I had no idea. I had just started using the mouse in reverse and I found it moved. And he was absolutely impressed that I could do it perfectly, I had no issues whatsoever. I was just doing it upside down. Four years later the first analysis module came. That again was very weak but in 2-3 years it started to become significant. I think it was important that I learnt to use it and was comfortable with computers right from the beginning. If something went wrong and it often did, I didnt have any background in programming but I could fiddle around in DOS, repair my machine and things like that. It became a very useful tool.

If we can draw this analogy: A countrys economy has several stages in its development. India was a largely agricultural company. Because of the emphasis on IT, India has skipped the manufacturing stage. Today we have a massive service, back-office and IT industry, but we dont have the manufacturing base of China. In

the same way in the 80s the Soviets had a massive lead in chess knowledge and expertise. Were you able to bypass that using IT? Yes, definitely. I think the parallel is exactly right. In the same way India just bypassed several technologies, we just missed the boat on so many technologies and we suddenly found the software industry. It almost seemed the only thing we could do with all the restrictions imposed on us, by ourselves, okay, fair enough. It was the same thing with chess. The Soviet Union had a big lead. If you lived in Moscow you had access to unbelievable expertise. But the lead in information was slowly cut, so it became instead of getting a book every three months you could get a diskette mailed to you every month. Then if you were travelling you could pick up that diskette from a friend. Or if you were simply happened to be in the same place he could make a copy for you. So that became instantaneous. A few years later the Internet arrived and even that vanished. You could live in India and have access. Then the first (online) chessclubs started coming along. For a lot of people, this idea that you had to practice, you could often practice with a Russian player who was also on the chessclub. So there was this big big levelling happening. In the same way I would guess you would leapfrog landlines you dont bother installing landlines because suddenly mobile phones have come in. That sort of thing, just bypassing a technology, I think that happened with chess. I think that is exactly right. Not only in India but there has been a sort of levelling in the world. The rest of the world has been able to catch up with Russia much faster than it would have had these things not come into play. And now I would say even the expertise is being levelled because you have computers that are so strong. I mean most programs on a PC would beat almost any grandmaster. Even when I play, or any top GM, we have to really concentrate to have a chance. If you are casual, the machine is too strong. So you have such a strong computer with which you can work all your doubts can be cleared much easier. Your learning curve that is why the sport has become much younger. The time needed to accumulate certain amount of experience and understanding has dropped. So yes, first the lag in information, then the lag in expertise or knowledge and geographical boundaries through the Internet. Each of these things we have bypassed. We are still as far away as we used to be but we have bypassed them.

When was the first time you started using engines? They must have been very weak in the beginning. I think it was right away. It is a very gradual process. As it gets stronger you use it a bit more, you take it a move further. Initially it was like a primitive calculator so you use it for one-move tactics just to make sure that you didnt make any mistakes in your work. Then you can do slightly sophisticated work where your tactics go a few moves further. It is a very gradual process. Then you buy new hardware, it jumps in strength, they issue new version of the program, it jumps in strength. You go along with it. Everyone is catching up as well so it is very gradual.

I think I started using them from the very beginning and it came from there. We are talking 1991-92 when Fritz came. After 20 years of dedicating your life to the sport, a piece of code on a PC is your equal. After all your years of effort, a mindless program can match you. Do you feel that way sometimes? We felt (that way). We are completely over it now. This issue, when Kasparov lost to Deep Blue there was this agonising. Suddenly computers had overtaken us. I think then we felt it much more strongly. Life goes on. You realize the world hasnt come to an end and you get used to it. A generation comes that doesnt understand the question at all. Someone like Carlsen who was 6 at that age, he doesn't agonise over it. He has grown up with computers that are incredibly strong. There must have been a point when the information in the libraries was more than that was contained in your head. There are lots of things that humans used to do, which we no longer do (better than machines). It would be interesting to compare it with those moments. In 1997-98 we felt this very strongly. Now there is hardly any interest. Because it is over, you know it is like running against a car. There are somethings we do much better than computers but since most of chess is tactically based they do many things better than humans. And this imbalance remains. I no longer have any issues. It is bit like asking an astronomer, does he mind a telescope does all the work. He takes an image, does image processing. He uses a computer which counts the pixels. Does he feel bad? He is used to it. It is just an incredible tool that you can use. Once you are past the initial tussle with your ego then it just feels natural. Right now it is not an issue. I know my PC is stronger than me at any given time and to have a chance against it I would spend a couple of weeks thinking about computer chess. How to play against machines. You stop doing anything imaginative but you become very disciplined tactically. I can probably still compete against it but what's the point? Now my main aim is to use it to find new ideas against Kramnik or someone else. We have gotten over that stage very fast. What are your thoughts on formats becoming shorter? I think it is a very natural progression. I quite like it. I like playing classical tournaments but I also like playing in rapid events. They are just more fun when you have both than when you only play one. There are lots of spectators who cannot come and sit out a seven-hour game but you go to Mainz for instance or Corsica, the hall was full of people because they knew it is going to finish in an hour. Also there is a decision in an hour. Somebody is eliminated. It makes it more attractive as a spectator sport. My match with Kramnik was very well followed in India. So it seems that there is a role for both. I have absolutely no issues with it. Especially when you see that you are not the only sport going through with this process of change. I dont remember the debates in tennis when tiebreakers were introduced but perhaps it was the same.

You mentioned rapid. Would it be fair to say that you are a very intuitive player? The moment you see a position, an idea comes to you in a flash. Very strongly. I think it was accentuated by what I did in the Tal chess club, playing those blitz games. You are what you are. Tal club definitely accentuated it and made the effect stronger. Since I grew up with that I continued. Nowadays I think a lot. In some of my games in Bonn I was thinking 45 minutes for a move and so on. That is simply modern chess. You need to work through so much preparation. I continue to remain an intuitive player. I think Malcolm Gladwell talks about it in Blink. He calls it thin-slicing. Yeah. And it is the one thing we have above computers. We reject an incredible amount of information very fast. Whereas they have to look at everything. They are doing it faster and faster and catching up in speed. Once upon a time my biggest advantage was in shorter controls. I could beat computers in blitz. To introduce a contrarian note about computers, former world champion Karpov has gone on record saying that using computers has made you more mechanical and less creative. Your comments? I would disagree strongly. I would say in general that Karpov is probably that generation which missed computers completely. You remember my match with him in advanced chess in 99. He couldnt use the computer. And it is not fair, his generation managed without computers. There was this whole generation, who couldnt get used to it Polugaevsky, Geller. I still remember their impressions when I showed them my computer this is all toys for children they had this attitude. Probably they would have felt it much more strongly when they heard that Kasparov had lost this game and now humans were losing regularly to computers. They saw chess in a much more intellectual light but as a human intellectual thing. I would respectfully disagree. Definitely I respect Karpov a lot. He is really the generation before and he doesnt have a good feel for the computers influence. I would say nowadays it is impossible to work without computers. And you dont become mechanical at all. It allows you to do incredibly creative things. I mean there are positions I can work on where it was not feasible to work on alone. The amount of work is too much. But now with the machine you can break it down so easily. At one level, in one sense, I would agree with him. Certain areas in chess have become mechanical but in some new areas creativity flowers. Now you have computer moves. Aesthetically you have these ugly moves. Again, at initial stages, I dont know whether it was because computers were weaker or our eye was so jaundiced against certain moves that we took longer to adapt. I dont know which of the two, it could have been both. But nowadays, computers are stronger so the suggestions are more respectable. And you can see the analysis and see why and grasp it immediately. I would also say we have developed a certain tolerance for unusual

moves. I mean, humans themselves play unusual moves nowadays. When I see some move my first reaction is no longer Oh, this is ghastly, my first reaction is aha, the tactics are working out or something. So I would say it is an evolutionary thing. We have slowly learnt that our understanding of chess was not complete and computers have gotten better. Every once in a while the computer will make a ghastly move. There is no question that in the Kings Indian when it plays Re2 or something in some position you understand that it just has no clue and there are so many examples in closed positions where they do ridiculous things. Very often the moves they point out, while ugly, have some tactical justification. And we have slowly learnt that a move is good if it works tactically, and it is not beneath contempt, a move can stand on its merits simply by being tactical rather than having any strategical depth. Building on that can you say that in the last century you had the Romantics, the Hyper-modernists, the various schools. All that is out of the window. Now whatever works, works. For example, you can have moves like 1.e4 c5 2. Qh5 played by Nakamura (Anand smiles). So can you say that style is dead? Not really. When we look back we tend to think of them as Romantics, Neo-Romantics and so on but they also went with what worked. If something didnt work they stopped doing it. Capablanca might have been very dismissive of Hypermodern openings but he started playing them himself in the 30s. In the 20s he said OK this is all rubbish, the Queens Gambit declined is good. In chess this feeling has always been there, if you cant refute something it has a right to exist. It is not a modern thing. The latest you can associate that trend is the 1940s with the Soviet grandmasters. The Soviet school of chess with started with people like Geller, Petrosian, Smyslov it was a very strong feeling they had that if something worked even if you had prejudices or you decided on some basis, the way you were brought up, that move was ugly, you still played it. Lets remember, openings like the Sveshnikov were laughed at when they first appeared. But after twenty years of trying to refute it people said well maybe there is something to it. We look back and think of that period as innocent or romantic but they were not playing for beauty they were playing for points. I make the same mistake when looking back. It is a very strong effect. But you have to remember, when you read books on what they thought, they try incredibly hard to find something that works and if you look at it from that standpoint, the standpoint of their views then, they were willing to make any move that they thought would win. Our sense for aesthetics has also improved, as I said, our tolerance for certain moves has improved by seeing it more often. Here I would say its imposing your personal views rather than letting the position decide

You are now 39. You are the oldest of your generation along with Ivanchuk. Are you feeling the effects of age?

Im aware that chess is becoming very young and that we are probably the outsiders. But look at Ivanchuk and me the last two years. It seems at least that if you are motivated and you train physically, you are able to cope. Kasparov is called the "Beast of Baku", Tal was called the "Magician from Riga" and so on. You are the "Tiger from Madras", are you happy with this or would you like to choose something else as a nickname? No, Im fine. We dont have tigers in Madras (laughs), but otherwise Im very happy with it. In fact we went recently to see tigers and I quite like the animal. Botvinnik became the champion in 1948. You beat Kramnik, a student of his in 2008. There is no other comparable Russian star. Is the Russian era over? Far from it. I think they are going through a brief rough patch. But still by many measures they are the leading chess country on earth. Thats not bad given they had so many bad years recently. I think simply the rest of the world is catching up. If you compare any single country with Russia they are still ahead on everything. Do you still play friendly blitz? Hardly ever. Only when Im training for something very specific. Because if I play blitz, then you lose and you want revenge. It is very difficult to play a single blitz game! You want to play for a long time, so I tend not to do that anymore. Do you go to servers anonymously and start demolishing everyone? No, I go on servers and watch other people, perfectly anonymously. I like to watch other people and some interesting games. Do you visit any chess sites? Sure. Quite a lot. I generally go to ChessBase and TWIC. Also nowadays go to many other sites, Chessvibes and Chesspro and so on. The top pages will have links to tournament websites. A large part of your preparation now must be opening prep. Do you still do tactical exercises, work on endgames? Yes, before Bonn I was doing tactical exercises every evening, five puzzles. I did certain endgames I was afraid of. Rook and Bishop and things like that. Amazingly, Rook and Bishop is the sort of thing you forget very easily how to defend properly. Even Grandmasters have great difficulty holding this ending so it is very tricky. So I go over that stuff a lot.

Moving onto Bonn, Game 3 was the epic encounter of the match. You missed a mate in 3. Did you see it immediately after playing Bh3? Or did someone tell you after the game? No they didnt tell me after the game! They told me after the match. They said now, we will break it to you. It is funny. They had two misses. One was Bf5 takes d3 in Game 3. The second paradoxically was Game 9 where I missed a draw with Bd3 takes f5. So both the moves I missed in the match involved a Bishop going between d3 and f5. With Black it was in this direction and with White the opposite. A nice coincidence. They didnt tell me (during the match) because I had won anyway so they didnt feel the need to tell. And because I won I didnt look at the game any further. We looked at the opening but I thought sitting and enjoying yourself like this should be kept for later. In Game 2 you had better position but went for a draw because of time trouble. Was that a new experience, playing under time pressure? Not really, I was in time pressure in Game 3 as well but I have been in time pressure quite often recently. Often still far less than others, but for me often enough. Ill put it this way. Game 2 I think I have spoiled it anyway. His knight has already come to d4, my bishops are sort of plodding in the side. I dont feel Im really better anymore. Maybe if I had an hour I could give it a shot but under the circumstances I decided to take his draw offer. Also it is funny, I needed two minutes to decide whether I was still better and then I had only two minutes left so it was a good decision. The biggest bombshell in the match was you playing d4. You have been a life-long e4 player. Switching to d4, they say that it requires a certain feel for the positions, an intuitive understanding. You dont have that much experience in playing d4 so did you worry about that? It was a problem and I went into it with quite some trepidation. You have a feeling that you may make a complete fool of yourself. Every game you will play, youll play your preparation and then in the middle-game because of unfamiliarity with certain structures you will make errors of judgement. That fear was in the back of my head. Last November I decided to play d4 and not going to revisit this decision. Im going to play it and told my team now you can start working on d4, this is the stuff you have to cover and Im not going to second-guess it. It is very easy to start second-guessing and there can be no way to finish this discussion. Im happy I stuck with it; it went much better than I hoped for. I had no difficulties but somewhere in the back of my head I did have this worry. Kramnik sat down for an exam, but you had changed the syllabus? Yes but with one caveat. After Leko and Topalov, both played d4 against him, I dont think Kramnik would be completely surprised if I had switched. But from his play in the match I think it is clear that he had not expected me to switch completely. He expected

me to play both, or he did not expect me to switch at all but prepared for the eventuality. When Leko played d4 he said he had not even given it a thought during preparation. I dont think I could hope to catch him like that. Game 5 is part of chess lore now. Something that will be discussed for years. Should he have repeated? It is funny. Should I have repeated was the question we had. This line with Bd6 suddenly ran into some difficulties. It is very funny it kept breaking down repeatedly on the rest day. Then at midnight I had something I could play so I went to sleep fairly calmly. In the morning when I came, they said bad news, it has collapsed. It kept going like this. Then we found another solution at 10:30. My normal routine was to go to sleep around 1, sleep till about 1:30, shower and everything and then go back for a final review at 2 O clock. When I went at 2O Clock they said the 10:30 recipe has collapsed as well. And now they were agonising over whether they should tell me or not. Because they felt if they didnt tell me and I lost, I would never forgive them. They were also afraid, does he need to know this? If there is one bad thing it might not turn up. At 2:30, Radek told me, you know the system with f5-f4, Im playing Be7 and it is holding for me. Literally, at 2:25 he told me this and till 2:30 we looked at it. My game was at 3 so at 2:30 we have to leave. I went back at 2:35 with this knowledge, okay, Be7, Radek said he had checked it and it holds. I was so tense before this game. Afterwards we were laughing, people asking should he have repeated, but the question is should I have repeated as well.

In the video, you see that when you reach your hand to play Ne3 and then you pull it back to double-check, that is when he sees it. Was he overconfident? Apparently youve given up a pawn for nothing This is a difficult question to answer. If he had seen it he wouldnt have allowed it of course. To allow it you would have to have not seen it. You never know. Whenever I play a move I think is winning or some move that is obviously winning when the position has not led to it, you are always worried that there is some obvious thing the rest of the world has seen and you cant see. What you are really afraid of is that afterwards you will be so embarrassed. People will ask you could you believe it he left that unattended or he gave you such a big chance. On the other hand if you dont find out you dont find out (laughs). You cant not play a move. He thought he was winning a pawn and getting into an almost winning ending. I dont know, it was a tricky one. Certainly it was nave. To think that I would just (leave that pawn). He could have played it some moves before. And then I went Rc5-c3. Given that I continued to allow this move should he still have assumed That probably was careless. I gave him three chances to do it. And that was careless.

Everyone thought he had seen it because he didnt take it earlier. When he took it were you I got you now or was it I cant believe my luck? Exactly. I dont know if it was on my face at that stage. I cant believe this is just winning. In Game 6, Karpov made the first move for you. And you won in a Karpovian style. It was funny for me. I got in a good idea. Actually the move b6-Bb7 we didnt take very seriously. We were looking at stuff that was much more direct like Rd8. He sacced his pawn, he went c5. It wasnt obvious to me that it was necessary but he is worse. He is not going to get an easy draw, he is worse. When he sacced the pawn I thought, I have to make lots of embarrassing moves, come back, respond to his threats for a while but I keep the pawn. I was a bit surprised. It slowly became evident that he had really no compensation. I have to make some accurate moves but essentially he has no compensation. In the technical realization, there were one or two small mistakes I made which crept in which he didnt exploit. There were ones where the tactical justification was harder. In the end he made lots of obvious moves but my responses were obvious as well. It went very smoothly. Round about the stage I go e4-e5 I just broke through. You also got in a novelty on move 9? Yes it is quite nice finding these moves. Again Kasimjanov had suggested it. We had prepared it as much for Black as for White. Was he there when you played Bb7 (in the earlier games)? He was watching. He wasnt in the hall. Their idea normally was to sleep when I was playing. But he said after Bb7 how can I sleep, I have to watch the rest of the game (laughs). Game 3 and 5 he didnt sleep at all. From G/7 it gets interesting. The tide seems to turn a little bit. Kramnik starts getting back into it. In all your post-game press conferences you were clear, Im going to take it game by game. On the other hand you dont have to play sharply. Was that preying on your mind? Yes it was preying on your mind. You are influenced by the score no matter what. Game 2 for instance I took a draw happily when I might have been better. It turned out my judgement was ok and I actually feel I was not better. But you dont agonize over that decision. When you get a 3-point lead, you start to agonize, Am I becoming too passive?, Should I play this position on for more?. In fact in Game 9 I dont know if I was trying to convince him or me when I went Bg5h4. From that point on nobody in my team was allowed to mention the lead and they understood this. Nobody mentioned the lead. We all pretended it didnt exist while knowing in our minds it did. There is a conflict there. It is very difficult to play as if you

dont have a lead. You know the risks of trying to be too passive. And I knew what had happened to me in Sanghinagar. I was about to bring that up So it was there. It was there in the background inevitably. You could see after Game 7 I was struggling a bit in the remaining part of the match. You continued to play extremely sharply. He could have won Game 9. He missed one winning chance. I would say the main thing was I wanted to play Bg5 before so I felt I should play it regardless. I shouldnt play a passive line. Inevitably if you start playing passively negative feelings enter. Even though we were close to the end of the match, if I had drawn Game 9 by being timid with white, I would still have to play Game 10. If I had lost I think I would have felt worse if I had not tried it in Game 9. Psychologically it was a good thing going for a risky line there. At any moment where in a normal game you think Ill take this chance, when you get here you think do I need to take such a big risk? This is a conflict with yourself you keep on going through. In Game 10, was this affecting you? No I dont think so. I think Re1 is simply a strong move. I couldnt find my way around. It turns out its a very strong idea. It is very subtle; there are lots of hidden points. I had not managed to solve the problems on the board. That is the reason I lost. There was one moment when I got Bg4 I actually thought, If I get to e5 and put the Knight on c4 Im pretty solid and maybe tonight I can party. Briefly this thought entered my head and then he went Qa6 and I understood I had basically screwed up. Then again, I would have played Bg4 even if I had thought I was not fine. I simply missed Qa6. Then the amazing final game. You are a lifelong e4 player. How do you feel that e4 was finally used as a drawing weapon? It wasnt a drawing weapon as such. I would say in the last game I was dealing with a kamikaze. I mean a guy who could do anything because his situation was so desperate. I had prepared for all his favourite systems but now he could do anything. He was a loose cannon. I thought it is better to be in familiar territory when he is a loose cannon. The idea was not to play (for a draw). Of course even in a winning position if he had offered a draw I might have taken it, but the idea was not to play for a draw. It is another thing to accept the draw when it comes but not play for it. The position got very wild at one stage and people wondered if you could control the complications.

For a brief moment when he went Bg7. But once I saw this manoeuvre with Qg3-f4 I knew I had probably nailed it. But I was very concentrated because it is a very sharp position. It can turn on a dime. Afterwards it turned out that White was not in any risk but there were many lines I looked at which looked very risky to me. At the end White was better. Any thoughts of playing on? Not at all (with emphasis). When he made his move Be3, the move came very slowly, so my heart rate started to go up. Then he offered the draw. For dignitys sake I held my hand back for one second (laughs).

If you could choose your opponent Topalov or Kamsky? Ive learnt never to pick these things you always get the other one (laughs). What are your thoughts on the current chaos in the GP? Also, you seem to be defending your title every year? I know. I try to focus on what I can control and leave it at that. Anyway, it seems that there will still be some discussion on the GP so we will see what it happens. I mean FIDE also has accepted that there will be some more consultations. What are your views on the Ivanchuk doping case? I dont know what will happen. Nobody has spoken about the issue, I dont know exactly what happens from here. But it will be the first case where everyone in the sport thinks what he did was trivial and inconsequential, even if he did take drugs because there are no drugs that we know that provide any benefit for chess. Because we are trying to get into the Olympic games we actually have to punish someone who has done nothing wrong in the view of the entire sport. It could get absurd. On the other hand if they dont take action I dont know what happens either. It is a completely ridiculous situation. No one in chess thinks that doping confers any advantage. So we are going to do something which we think is pointless.