YouSaid · the spoken record

Viswanathan Anand

lines on the record

76

first

2023-08-30

most recent

2023-08-30

sittings or episodes

1

sources

podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

1. “There is some draw. I think you take in bishop B8, and then the Sniters lose. The details are thing When he played F4, I thought this move I don't remember at all. And I was searching racking my brain to find out why. And I could not figure it out. Then suddenly I had this almost something flashed in my head. And this night was on this square, on D3”

   2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “And I played Bishop C5. So I'll tell you, I spent 25 minutes in this position because I couldn't remember a thing. I vaguely remembered that sorry I'll move the pieces that if he goes H3 then this is the draw”

   2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “To take this very well. So they all help me in different ways, and it was nice. When you get that kind of feedback, it of course gives you a hell of a lot of confidence.”

   2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Can I help? I mean, literally about him, that's what he said, which is the funniest story. So we said, of course you can help. And I was amazed how dedicated he was. He could easily, he was just doing this on his own thing. So he could have easily said, I'll help you for an hour. I would have accepted, I'll look at your notes for 10 minutes, I would accept it. But there were days, he sat with the team till 5 in the morning, working all night. He had just gone to Baku to play an event. He played there. And then at night he would work with us. And for the team, it was great because we were getting his insights into his opening. We realized there was so much we had missed. He started to think. And every game, he basically became my fifth, second from game five till the final game. And I couldn't possibly thank him enough. And I'd just beaten him two years ago in the match. So again, it was, I think his ability to put that aside that impressed me. We had kind of spoken a little bit the previous year about his newborn daughter and kind of broke the ice, but I was still feeling awkward. I thought it might take a bit of time for both of us to move on, but in fact he seemed to be able to...”

   2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Topalov doesn't like to be passive, but he is also much more of a, he actually can play positional chess incredibly well, but over the board he tends to lapse in this area and the gap between him, between his positional play and his sharp openings that he's really comfortable with is huge. So stylistically he is more limited. And the idea was you are a better natural player than me. So you should try to steer the game through more harmless, which is how we came under the Karamnik approach. More harmless waters play sensible chess and don't get into forced lines that much and you'll probably have the easier time of it. I mean more of a philosophical thing. So Kramnik called Hazim Shanov on the after the fourth game. I'm flattered that you are trying to copy my openings but you're doing it very badly.”

   2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Specific openings. He said, Look, they are outdated, but for what it's worth, here they are, and you can check them with modern analysis. That's fine. Kramnik was the heaviest. We had come to the conclusion that Kramnik's approach against Apollo hadn't been a bad approach. So we were copying the Catalan, what we call the Alista variation of the Slav defense, and we were copying many aspects of how he played that role.”

   2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “So Carlson had already been my sparring partner before the match with Kramnik, and we repeated that. So literally he came over, we played three days of blitz, five minute chess. And the idea was I would select all the positions that I was going to use and play it against him. And we would not tell Carlson what we were going to play. We were using Carlson's strength as a practical player and saying, if I surprise you with this, let me see how you react. Maybe you've faced this before, let me see how you react and try to play against that because I thought Carlson is of the level of Kramnik and Topa. So playing against him gives me a good sense of how they'll play, how the games will materialize and so on. He did that in both times. He didn't help much during the match. I think once in a while Nielsen was obviously in touch with him, so they would chat on Skype or whatever and he might give an impression, but it wasn't more than that. Kasparov would call in a couple of times. He gave me some of his notes in...”

   2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “And I knew every move I made, I said rook C5, I don't trust this position well, but Radek told me it works. That's good enough, so on. So we went with that and then he blundered. But I was already in a very good situation. I knew what I had to do. I knew I was where I was supposed to be. And I knew that I wasn't worse, which is enough to take to the board.”

   2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “From 2 to 225 or something, where they just brush me up on everything and last minute stuff and everyone. So at about 220, Radick said, look, there's one thing I want to show you. Sit down. So I sat down. And he showed me this one line exactly which happened game five. And he said, this is a terrible line. I've spent all night on it. I finally found an emergency solution. So emergency parachute. You play a rook C5 at this point. The rook is kind of active on this rank. I've checked it. It doesn't lose on the spot. Go. So his job was there's no way.”

   2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “That is very strange. I would have to say he took it personally. He took this opening personally. He just said, but this opening, my understanding of chess, everything I believe in chess on the chess board tells me I'm better here. And so he kept going back to it. First time it can happen. I mean, he plays a main line. He thinks he's well prepared. And then I have this slightly unusual line that I prepared at depth. It goes bad. But game five, I think he took it personally. By game eight, I had moved on because I knew that allowing for everything, we knew that his sense that White was better was correct. And we had run as far with this as we should, and we went to our second opening, which is the Vienna, and we went to that. But it's really only game five. He took it personally, he came in, but once again, we had outstanding prep. And by a miracle, my trainer, my Polish trainer, Vajeszek, he literally, you know, we have this hurried conference.”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Look embarrassing. I can make a few moves, come back, and then we can go drill deeper once if he does something unexpected. So it wouldn't have been that easy. But if he had the confidence, it wasn't the bad strategy to try. He could have done it. Not because he thinks he's going to outplay me, but because he thinks, well, I know this just as well as you. And let's see what you got. It's that kind of thing. So it's not quite as easy. In fact, I face this often myself in reverse that Kramik used to play for suddenly a lot against me. And it's very nice to say I have more experience than him, but where should I strike? Which is the area he's likely to be weakened. That's not easy to pick out.”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Sort of gauge what the work he might have done, have a sense of what areas he specializes in, then avoid them at all costs, because that's the best strategy for success. Avoid the club player's preparation. It doesn't matter if you're playing it well or bad. The difference in level will show. But if you play into anything where the computer could have had a guiding hand, you have pretty bad. Anyway, the thing with Kramnik was that I had a team. All of them were DeFor specialists. We had eight months during which I could have trained a lot. And we trained a lot on default. We found interesting ideas. I played training games. Again, to make up for this lack of understanding, play training games, check it again with the computer, go deeper and deeper, try to understand hidden nuances and so on. So I was pretty confident that we had lines prepared against the Grudenfeld king. In fact, I had a complete default repertoire. Start to finish. Even the most obscure lines, the job for my second was give me a line that doesn't lose and I don't.”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “That's right. What had changed in the meantime one is computers, which meant that even a player who didn't have a lot of experience in an opening might simply have good computer moves. And if you have good computer moves, you understand them well and you play them where they're supposed to be played, then understanding cannot make up for it. The computer evaluation, the gap is just too strong. So imagine that the computer says this move and you're plus one. I will take that against anyone. I'll take that even against a specialist because it was a pretty good odds. In fact, it is one of the things which is leveled preparation that a club player who knows one opening well can play against a top grandmaster in that opening. And so the top grandmaster is insight has to be take a look at the club player.”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Does not come up very often. Obviously, its results are very favorable to him, but over a long enough career you notice it often enough. You give him a position where he is not very active and he thinks he has to lash out. And this has nothing to do with this understanding of chess. It's simply, he has this urge to lash out and be tactical. And for instance, Karamnik is lethal with him because he knew how to get the kind of positions where Gary would lash out and then he would punish it. My style didn't allow me to punish him quite so well, so I've exploited it on fewer occasions, but that one went like a dream in Moscow. And it made up for losing to him a little bit earlier in the month in Riga. So I was happy to win that against him. Then when I went and lost Ivanchuk in the final. Who did his typical thing of suddenly realizing his whole life depended on this one game? So I lost him and then played the match against Gary a few months later.”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “It was a rapid game. So we played it in Moscow. And I kind of found myself playing against him. I didn't, it was a morning session. We had an evening session. So both matches were on the same day. And I just wanted to play something relatively harmless. So I played some solid setup. I thought today's not the day for the theoretical battle. I just play something. Yeah, Queen D4 against. Quintix D4 came back and I'll just do something sensible and we'll worry about this another day. Theoretical battle another day. One of the things about Gary”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “He's even more vulnerable, I think, psychologically than many others. So if he's not in the right frame of mind, his level can plummet. But equally, he can suddenly motivate himself to do great things. And the hardest problem even is that he looks totally distracted during the game. And that also lulls you into a false sense of security. With him, it's always psychology watching his face, things like that which mattered more than the actual moves.”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “But that's chess. And I think it bugged him a lot. And so for many years he would ignore the rest of the tournament. He almost couldn't concentrate against the others. Then when he came against me, you knew he'd been waiting the whole week for this one game. And it was kind of annoying to have such a mark on your back. There's one guy who is just looking for, thinking of you all the time while you're thinking of all your opponents in a very organized fashion. Anyway, many years later in Tatterstale in 2003, in Vaikunze, I realized that he wasn't even concerned about me anymore. Now the new mark for him was Panamaryov, who had just beaten. So I felt relieved, okay, he can have Choki. But Ivan Chuk's level can vary enormously. And I think that was the tricky part in playing him, that you had to focus a bit harder than others. You couldn't get by and just natural moves because he could be playing genius moves or his level could drop a lot.”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “He is very dangerous, but there are some patterns. I found that actually we met in the World Cadet, so the under 16 championships in 1984. And then we kind of kept bumping into each other, and actually my initial score with them was quite positive. I think I've never had a negative score against him. But quite often in painful moments, moments when I wasn't expecting any danger from him, that's when he would beat me. So there's a clear pattern. I wouldn't call it underestimation, but you kind of feel you're wallowing in your strength and you think it'll probably work out fine. There's no need to worry about all these things. And then that's when he would beat you. And when you're fully concentrated, well, his code is not so good. Solution kind of suggested itself. But he was a tricky opponent all my life. The thing is because I started out with an early Plus score against him and he saw it as a stiff rivalry. Initially, I just thought, well, he's Soviet, so he must be better than me. So I didn't feel any rivalry. Then even when I got better than him, I didn't switch into this that he's my rival. I kept thinking, well,”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “That was annoying. Then I got incredibly lucky against Pologski. And then a couple of draws against Gelfand and Ivanchok amongst others. And in the last round, I beat Beljewski still in a natural way. I mean, it's not like I had gone that far from my roots, but it happened and Kasparovan, a carpov drove with Gelfand, and I realized I'm in first place. So that was a very nice surprise. I remember faxing a friend. Just I won, I won, I wrote it three times and faxed it to him. I don't know if everyone in the audience will know what a fax machine is, but anyway. We have some of us, remember. Yeah. So I did that and I was very excited and so on. I felt stronger. I realized that the same people who cost me a lot of problems earlier in the year, I was at least able to deal with them. It's a work in progress because they also constantly work at self-improvement and so on, but at least I felt I could confront them on equal terms.”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “And all these things combined, and then in Reggie Emilia, I won my first game with Salov. I suddenly thought, I actually played that game quite well. I don't know what happened, but I played that game quite well. Then I beat Casper in the second round. Again, it seemed pretty easy, and I've already beaten him twice within two months. Then I lost to my trainer. He seemed to know he lured me into a totally harmless position and then waited for me to get impatient. And I mean, literally someone who has good psychological insight into you.”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Because I was volatile, some position I would get excited, think that things are going very well, I'd start playing fast, miss a few things, then come back. I stepped over the mark, this, that, all the things. What I think made the difference was I was suddenly facing people who didn't resign the game very quickly, who didn't collapse, especially Karpov. Even in the worst positions, he would continue resisting. And that's an art you learn. And then you realize this point is not going to come easily. I've got to push again and push harder. And it's one thing, training for this, but it's not real. The second thing is actually facing it over the board. And then it becomes real in a way.”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “We would adjourn games that again was still happening then. We'd adjourn games, which means that you seal your 40th or your 60th move, you continue another day. And Gorovich would sit and analyze for me. We would discuss the position briefly. Then he'd tell me, no, you go to sleep, I'm going to spend the whole night working. So he would work till three or four in the morning, checking everything alone. And the next morning when I woke up, he would brief me on everything. And then you suddenly realize, oh my God, how many things he found while he was working in this position? Mine was very scatterbrained because I was an intuitive player. I often couldn't explain what it is I was going to do. I would find the correct move very often, but if you pin me as to why, I didn't really know. It was just the way I played chess. So this kind of thing, I played a couple of tournaments between Brussels and Reggiamelia. Specifically, I played in Tilburg. I beat Casper. I beat Capu. I beat Camski. I beat Kochinoi.”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Yes, we are talking 91. And such, forget it, I'll switch it off. And I was kind of annoyed. I didn't see why I couldn't have that running in the background, which just shows the gulf in professionalism, if you like. But it was like that. His thing was very systematic. During the match with Karpov,”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “A year since I qualified. Again, I worked with Gurovic, who had been on Kasperov's team and so on. I started working with him a lot. I had played Linares. I played Munich. So I'd suddenly started to play very strong tournaments and faces opposition regularly. Gurovich taught me lots of things. First of all, a lot of personal insights about Karpov. You know, he always used to say when Karpo was fidgeting at his lips like this, that means he's not quite, he's calculating, but he's not quite sure what's happening and he's nervous. And then you look for it and you actually see the man fidgeting with his lips and then you realize that his moves are shaky. You know, it kind of opens your eyes to the practical element. We worked very hard. Again, I think the level with him was one notch higher than what I'd worked to with Van der Veil and Heller's. One funny story, the first day I asked Gurovich if I could watch, there was a Star Trek going on in the background, would he mind if I watched that while we work? And he said, no. He said, if you want to watch...”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Well, we would actually sit in the board and move the pieces ourselves. And for the first time, they systematically went down a list and said, if you're going to play this opening, all these things have to be checked. And I had not taught like that before. My thing was I'll check the top two things and I'll figure out the rest, which was not as silly as it sounds today because back in the day, that's how you play chess. The computers couldn't play chess at all at that stage. For the first time, I thought in an organized way, I started to work. And there are people opposite you who contradict you, who are strong enough to contradict you and tell you, no, actually, I think you're wrong here. You should think of this mover. This is better, that is better. I once did this and what have you. So you start to work like that on a systematic basis. I played my first candidates match in January in Chennai against Drave and suddenly I was paired against Kapov for the quarterfinals. That was going to be in Brussels in July.”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “I think it's just the work I'd been doing had kind of accumulated and had hit a certain level. So to give you some background, I qualified for the candidates for the first time in the interzonal in Manila in 1990, about July 1990. And Regio Melia was a year and a half later. So for the first time, I started to work seriously on my openings. I got together some trainers. This training will look very funny to modernize, but back then it was considered, let's say,”

    2023-08-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source