The five-time world chess champion demystifies the finer nuances of strategy, tactics, and destiny as he traces his extraordinary journey on and off the chess board
Viswanathan Anand, India’s first grandmaster
Chess legend Viswanathan Anand, India’s first grandmaster and top player for 37 years, stormed into the global league of top chess players at a time when USSR was known to be the undisputed nation of chess geniuses. In a free-wheeling chat, the five-time world chess champion recalls his encounters against some of the most formidable opponents and his historic rise as one of the world’s greatest chess players. “I am quite happy where I have ended up,†he says as he traces his extraordinary journey on and off the chess board. This is part one of edited excerpts from an interview on Forbes India Pathbreakers:
In the end, as I got to know them better and better, they all became individuals to me. They became not some group called the Soviet Grandmasters, but they were individuals, and each one was very, very different. Their country was pretty strange on its own. Again, from the outside you see this kind of closed society. There was very little information and they had very strange procedures. It's a trip into the unknown, but slowly you find they have very, very nice people, very friendly. Once that gap opens, it’s fine. Most of my most memorable and beautiful tournaments were in Russia. Some of the best tournaments happen there because they have people who genuinely love chess and when they sponsor chess events, they do it at a fantastic level. I always felt much appreciated there.
Also read: Indians no longer want to just play chess; they want to be the best: Viswanathan Anand