King of the board

Viswanathan Anand is the undisputed champion after winning the world chess championships  in all three formats — knockout,  round-robin and match-play, writes M. S. Unnikrishnan

Viswanathan Anand has always been an enigmatic player, but his resilience and keenly focussed approach, have taken him from restricting circumstances to the top. Anand has, indeed, changed the dynamics of the chess world, forever.

In the rarefied field of international chess, Anand has stood out but it has not been an easy ride for him as there have been times when his fans have been shocked by his inexplicable losses.

In the Grandmasters’ Challenge at Bilbao, Spain, he finished last a few days before his face-off with Vladimir Kramnik at Bonn. He not only failed to win a single game at Bilbao, but also got dislodged from his No 1 perch, and stumbled to the fifth place.

For the first time in a decade, Anand found himself out of the top three in the world ranking.

But nothing can keep Vishy down for long. A few days later he was the World Champion once again, regaining his No 1 ranking as well. He earned 13.6 Elo points from the three wins to overtake Bulgarian Grandmaster (GM) Veselin Topalov to log 2,796.6 points in the FIDE (International Chess Federation) ranking. His next aim is to tote up 2,800 points, but he will have to do a lot of catching up to equal Gary Kasparov’s all-time record of 2,851 Elo points. Kasparov is still the highest-ranked GM in the history of the game, and it will be hard, even for Anand, to emulate Kasparov.

At Bonn, the sharp-witted Anand gave a crushing reply to boastful Kramnik, by beating him with 6.5-4.5 points to retain his world title in their 12-round clash with one game to spare.

Anand required just half a point in the 11th game to keep the crown, and he did precisely that, getting a truce from Kramnik after 24 moves, lasting three hours. Anand gave a brilliant display with white pieces while Kramnik played the Sicilian defence with black for the first time. Anand thus ended Kramnik’s undefeated streak in the match-play World Championship.

"I’m more relieved than happy," Anand said after receiving the trophy. He thanked his team of seconds and wife Aruna for helping him climb the summit once again. (Aruna manages his schedule, travel plans, interviews etc.) "It feels good to keep the title," Anand added.

After his win, the 39-year-old Anand has become the only Grandmaster to win all three formats of world chess titles — the 128-player knockout championship (2000 Tehran, now discontinued), the eight-player knockout round-robin championship (2007 Mexico City) and the traditional match-play. He was also the first player from outside the Soviet bloc, after Bobby Fischer in 1972, to win the world title.

Anand won the knockout title in 2000, held in Delhi and Tehran, defeating Alexei Shirov in the final. The same year, he also won the blitz title, defeating Karpov, Gelfand and Svidler. And in 2003, he won the world rapid title, beating Kramnik.

The Russian had boasted at Mexico City, after finishing second behind Anand, that he had only "loaned" the title to Anand. Kramnik’s putting on airs was due the fact that he had beaten Kasparov in match-play in 2000.

But after being humbled by Anand, Kramnik admitted that he had learnt a lot from the match. "He was very interesting all the way. When you are playing against a player like Vishy, you can lose," said the Russian, who for once was gracious in defeat.

Even Gary Kasparov, considered the greatest chess player, on a par with the late Bobby Fischer, did not win the world crown in three different formats.

The latest win has made him richer by around Rs 6 crore. (The total prize money of Euro 1.5 million was split equally by Anand and Kramnik).

Nobody can dispute Anand’s status as the true world champion. He toiled for seven months, 19 hours a day, to sharpen his moves. Former world champion Rustam Kazimdzhanov was his main second, assisted by Peter Heine Nielson (Denmark), Radoslav Wojtaszek (Poland) and Suryasekhar Ganguly (India). These players worked hard behind the scenes, putting more hours than Anand, to plot his moves, which he successfully employed against Kramnik.

Gary Kasparov observed that Anand took on Kramnik after doing thorough homework. He will next meet the winner of the contest between former World Champion Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria) and Gata Kamski (US).

Anand surprised Kramnik with his opening gambit of moving a pawn in front of the king, and was consistent throughout, barring the tenth game.

Kramnik, who lives in Paris, and follows art, literature and music, insisted after conquering his "guru" Kasparov in the parallel World Championship in 2000 that Anand will never be considered a true world champion till he took him on in a one-to-one contest. Anand’s "soft play" and "gentle nature" had come in under scrutiny when he lost to Kasparov, after leading in the 2005 parallel World Championship in New York. On a specially erected deck on the 107^th floor of the World Trade Center, Anand deftly marked his moves to hold Kasparov to eight consecutive draws before he stunned the champion in the ninth game.

"He’s not God, I can beat him", Anand had said then, and he almost did, but for a fag-end capitulation, which cost him the title.

Shaken by Anand’s game, a furious Kasparov walked off without the mandatory handshake, and banged the door loudly. Though Kasparov had staged a brilliant rally to down Anand to win the crown. This was touted as another instance of Anand’s "lack of killer instinct".

But the Anand who took on Kramnik was a significantly changed player — aggressive, confident, fast, ruthless, well-prepared, and keeping his gambit close to his heart. (Some experts even averred that Anand deliberately underplayed himself at Bilbao to confuse his challenger).

Kramnik had a haughty attitude, as Bonn was the venue of his choice. He also had a say in the prize money. Gazprom, the Russian oil exploration company, was the co-sponsor of the title bout, while Russia cement giants Eurocement had given total financial backing to Kramnik’s preparation.

Even after drawing the first game with Anand, Kramnik boasted at a press briefing that he always won the second game. (Kramnik had fought back from the edge, against Peter Leko, in the classical world championship in 2004). Anand, sitting alongside the Russian, gave only a gentle smile, as he preferred to reply with his opening gambits, and not with meaningless words.

After Kramnik had a narrow escape in the second game, Anand demolished the pretensions of his Russian challenger with wins in the third, fifth and sixth games to take a decisive lead, which eventually proved the clincher. Though Kramnik got a superior position for the first time in the eighth game, Anand defended dourly to thwart the Russian’s winning moves.

In fact, Anand’s aggression kept Kramnik behind, till the Russian pulled back a win in the tenth game. But Kramnik had no counter moves against the novel moves and strategy of Anand, who scored the first two wins with black and the third with white. The Russian said he was ‘jealous’ of the Indian genius as "Anand plays chess very well, like in the 23^rd century!" Kramnik is a slow player whereas Anand is fast, and invariably gets time advantage.

Anand made his first stride to greatness when he emerged the World Junior Champion in 1987. Twenty years down the line, there is no title that has not been his, for the asking.

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