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On this DVD, a team ofexperts looks closely atthe secrets of Karpov’sgames. In more than 7hours of video, theauthors examine four

essential aspects of Karpov’s superb play.

Sagar Shah shows you onthis DVD how you can usetypical patterns used bythe Master of the past inyour own games. Fromopening play tomiddlegame themes.

Anand in interview – on intuition, creativity and blitz chess3/14/2009 – In the past month we brought you two sections of an unprecedented in-depth interview conducted byIndian colleagues with World Champion Viswanathan Anand. Today we continue the series with Anand's take ongame formats, computer moves (ugly or creative?), Karpov, Kasparov, and secretly watching people on the chessservers. Part three of four.

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Anand on Chess – from square one to the World Championship in BonnInterview TranscriptLocation: ChennaiDate: 26th December, 2008. Interviewers: Sriram Srinivasan and Jaideep Unudurti (Outlook Business)

What are your thoughts on the game 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 inrapid events. They are just more fun when you have both than when you only play one. There are lots ofspectators who cannot come and sit out a seven-hour game, but you go to Mainz for instance or Corsica, the hall isfull of people because they knew it is going to finish in an hour. Also there is a decision in an hour. Somebody iseliminated. 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 absolutelyno issues with it. Especially when you see that you are not the only sport going through with this process ofchange. I don’t 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 aposition, 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 arewhat you are. The Tal Club definitely accentuated it and made the effect stronger. Since I grew up with that, Icontinued. Nowadays I think a lot. In some of my games in Bonn I was thinking 45 minutes for a move. That issimply 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 over 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 atime 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 sayingthat 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 computerscompletely. You remember my match with him in Advanced Chess in 1999. He couldn’t use the computer. And it isnot fair, his generation managed without computers. There was this whole generation, who couldn’t get used to it– Polugaevsky, Geller. I still remember their impressions when I showed them my computer – “this is all toys forchildren” – they had this attitude. Probably they would have felt it much more strongly when they heard thatKasparov had lost this game and now humans were losing regularly to computers. They saw chess in a much moreintellectual light, but as a human intellectual thing.

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So I would respectfully disagree. Definitely I respect Karpov a lot. He is really the generation before and he doesn’thave a good feel for the computer’s influence. I would say nowadays it is impossible to work without computers.And you don’t become mechanical at all. It allows you to do incredibly creative things. I mean there are positions Ican work on where it was not feasible to work on alone. The amount of work is too much. But now with themachine you can break it down so easily. At one level, in one sense, I would agree with him. Certain areas in chesshave 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 don’t know whether it was because computers were weaker or our eye was so jaundicedagainst certain moves that we took longer to adapt. I don’t know which of the two, it could have been both. Butnowadays, computers are stronger so the suggestions are more respectable. And you can see the analysis and seewhy 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, thisis ghastly”. My first reaction is “aha, the tactics are working” or something. So I would say it is an evolutionarything. 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 King’s Indian when itplays Re2 or something in some position you understand that it just has no clue and there are so many examples inclosed positions where they do ridiculous things. Very often the moves they point out, while ugly, have sometactical justification. And we have slowly learnt that a move is good if it works tactically, and it is not beneathcontempt. 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, thevarious schools. All that is out of the window. Now whatever works, works. For example, you can havemoves 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 alsowent with what worked. If something didn’t work they stopped doing it. Capablanca might have been verydismissive of Hypermodern openings, but he started playing them himself in the 30s. In the 20s he said okay thisis all rubbish, the Queen’s Gambit declined is good.

In chess this feeling has always been there, if you can’t refute something it has a right to exist. It is not a modernthing. The latest you can associate that trend with is the 1940s with the Soviet grandmasters, the Soviet school ofchess which started with people like Geller, Petrosian, Smyslov. It was a very strong feeling they had that ifsomething worked, even if you had prejudices or you decided on some basis, the way you were brought up, thatmove was ugly, you still played it.

Let’s remember, openings like the Sveshnikov were laughed at when they first appeared. But after twenty years oftrying to refute it people said well maybe there is something to it. We look back and think of that period asinnocent or romantic, but they were not playing for beauty, they were playing for points. I make the same mistakewhen looking back. It is a very strong effect. But you have to remember, when you read books on what theythought, they try incredibly hard to find something that works, and if you look at it from that standpoint, thestandpoint of their views, then they were willing to make any move that they thought would win. Our sense foraesthetics has also improved, as I said, our tolerance for certain moves has improved by seeing it more often.Here I would say it’s 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 ofage?

I’m aware that chess is becoming very young and that we are probably the outsiders. But look at Ivanchuk and methe 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 "Tigerfrom Madras", are you happy with this or would you like to choose something else as a nickname?

No, I’m fine. We don’t have tigers in Madras (laughs), but otherwise I’m very happy with it. In fact we wentrecently 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 othercomparable 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 leadingchess country on earth. That’s not bad, given they had so many bad years recently. I think simply the rest of theworld 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 I’m training for something very specific. Because when you play blitz, then you lose andyou want revenge. It is very difficult to play a single blitz game! You want to play for a long time. So I tend not todo 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 someinteresting 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 andChesspro and so on. The top pages will have links to tournament websites.

A large part of your preparation now must be opening preparation. Do you still do tactical exercises, work onendgames?

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 todefend properly. Even grandmasters have great difficulty holding this ending, so it is very tricky. So I go over thatstuff a lot.

Sriram Srinivasan, Viswanathan Anand and Jaideep Unudurti at the time of the interview

Part one – Part twoThe final part four on the World Championship in Bonn will follow soon

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Anand – My Career in Chess

Anand: My Career Vol. 1The first DVD with videos from Anand's chess career reflects the very beginning of that career and goes as far as1999. It starts with his memories of how he first learned chess and shows his first great games (including thosefrom the 1984 World Championship for juniors). The high point of his early developmental phase was the winningof the 1987 WCh for juniors. After that, things continue in quick succession: the first victories over Kasparov,World Championship candidate in both the FIDE and PCA cycles, and the high point of the World Championshipmatch against Kasparov in 1995.

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Anand: My Career Vol. 2The second DVD begins in 2000, when Anand became FIDE World Champion, and it ends with his victory in the2007 World Championship in Mexico. Anand not only analyses his best games, but casts a look back at the WorldChampionshp in Delhi/Teheran in 2000 and the years before, he discusses the situation in the Bundesliga andKasparov's retirement from tournament chess.

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Playchess in Holland , and both hands in blitz3/23/2009 – Last Saturday there was a press meeting of the Dutch Chess Federationto launch a new Internet chess project, in partnership with Playchess. We used theopportunity to visit the Hypercube Blitz tournament, which is held in Utrecht everyyear. As chance would have it we barged into a controversy on how many hands youcan legally use in speed chess. Here are the graphic details. [Discuss]

Anand on chess as a profession and on computers2/23/2009 – World Champion Viswanathan Anand was one of the pioneers in the useof computers for chess. He started using chess database just months after Kasparov,and stuck with information technology ever since. In part two of his indepth interviewAnand also speaks about books, professional chess and sporting heros. We have dugup some unique historical pictures. [Discuss]

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