Interviews from the World Championship
Part One
(This is from my monthly column on chesscafe.com)
It was about twenty years ago that I met a special young chess player, whose love and passion for chess was quickly apparent, and given the accuracy, speed and depth of his analysis, he clearly had talent. He even stayed in our home in Budapest, where we analyzed, played and talked about chess.
Today, Viswanathan Anand (known as Vishy to his friends and fans) is the #1 player in the world and is the undisputed world champion. He hails from India, where he trail blazed the way for such young talents as Sasikiran, Harikrishna, Koneru and Negi, just to name a few. He is loved and admired by millions of fans around the world for his special style of chess and his gentlemanly demeanor. He is a product of chess genius, hard work and dedication.
On September 29, Anand became the new world champion by winning the 2007 World Championship tournament in Mexico City in fine and convincing style, a full point ahead of the next competitor, without a single loss in fourteen games against top-flight competition.
Here are some excerpts of my one on one interview with Vishy Anand following the world championship.
Great interview. Thanks Susan!
Hi Susan, and chess fans all around the world as pete Temburro used to declare in his flash video lectures.
The interview is absolutely fantastic! I am reading it now with thirst. And already I have a question: Anand said: ..For instance, in some of the games here, especially the Moscow variation…
What is the Moscow variation? Is it in queen’s pawn games or in the Marshall?
Another thing: I am sorry if I had over reacted in the late post about the up and coming changes in your blog. I did not mean to give mouth to all sort of offenders. I am with you Susan all the way where ever you lead.
best wishes
Abie
I agree with Anand that children learn better in the form of [with the help of] a game.
However, there are many more accessible games than chess, and many reasons why chess should not be the main game chosen to facilitate learning.
It doesn’t teach team working and doesn’t have a physical dimension which adds to the fun.
As stated before, the huge amount of opening theory subtracts from the attractiveness of chess in schools.
anon. 6:14:00 have said: “.. many reasons why chess should not be the main game chosen to facilitate learning…” . Can you elaborate on that. For example, what games do you recommend? Its an interesting topic.
As I am going to probably teach chess to kids this year, this subject interests me a great deal.
Different games exercise different generic ‘character’ attributes: you could draw up a list of the sort of attributes you wanted to develop – and ‘matrix’ a set of games onto them, indicating which game develops which attribute to what extent.
Obviously aimed at different age-ranges but you could consider the games:
– Noughts and Crosses
– Solitaire (1-person game)
– the 2-Urn game
– de Bono’s L-game
– variants of chess
6*6 chess, no e.p./Bishops..
Losing Chess
‘Mate in N’ positions
Study-positions (not too hard)
– Hex on an n*n board, small n
– Othello, small board
– Connect-4
– “Can’t Stop”, measuring risk
Undisputed champ and still large numbers of people don’t regard his title as having more than paper value because of the tournament format. Maybe next year he can put all this to rest.
Dear Susan,
Do you really think Anand is “undisputed Champ”?
What is a deep difference between the last Mexico WCC 2007 and, say, Linares? From my point of view – and I’m sure I’m not alone – Anand is a disputed Champ until he wins a match vs. Kramnik.
I agree with michael… Anand must win against Kramnik then we can celebrate his world championshp victory… Other wise people always talks on this subject. And I wish Anand will defeat Kramnik at this matches. He will be our new century Capablanca.