Gukesh, who became the youngest-ever Candidate’s winner in history last year, trains at Anand’s WestBridge Anand Chess Academy. By winning the Candidates, Gukesh got the opportunity to challenge Liren for the title of world champion. Anand though had never imagined this scenario. However, Anand had never imagined that the script would unfold so soon.
” I think it’s fair to say that when we started the academy four years ago, this was not even in our very most optimistic scenarios. I mean, we had all sorts of expectations. You know, what could happen, but this has gone unbelievably well. We have been working very hard and closely with him.” Anand said in an interview to CNBCTV-18.
Also Read: All about D Gukesh vs Ding Liren FIDE World Chess Championship: Venue, date, rules and more
Some other famous names who have trained at the academy are grandmasters Arjun Erigaisi, R Praggnanandhaa and R Vaishali.
Anand believes that Gukesh will hold a slight advantage over Liren when the world championship match gets underway, considering the success that the Indian grandmaster has tasted this year.
“He’s had the better year. He has outperformed Ding, no question about that. ” Anand added.
Despite riding a wave of success, Anand feels Gukesh will have to remain cautious against Liren.
“… matches have their own logic, and so here he’ll have to fight from the first game. I expect his opponents form will improve significantly. You know, when confronted with the reality that he’s playing the World Championship and second in an individual match, other dynamics take over. So it’s very much a struggle that will begin in a few days” Anand said.
Anand also sheds light on how WACA came into existence and how it functions.
” the way WACA was set up was..we tried to pick the most promising youngsters. We started in December 2020, and we tried to pick the most promising youngsters. One obvious line or criteria that suggested itself then was who were the youngest grand masters in the country. So we picked four so four boys and Vaishali, subsequently, that has been growing, and I tried to structure a series of regular classes. So we had expert trainers, people like Yusupov (Artur Yusupov), Gajewski (Grzegorz Gajewski), Sandipan Chanda. What we would do is schedule regular, regular classes, obviously, very, very useful during the pandemic, that they could attend and keep working on checks just regularly.” Anand said.
At WACA, Gajewski, a Polish grandmaster, became a common link between Anand and Gukesh.
“Gajewski, who was also a trainer for WACA, and that he worked full time with Gukesh, and really sort of help him fix his opening repertoire. Because Gukesh’s opening repertoire was set for an earlier stage of his career. Now that he was competing at the very top, he would need a new level, a new depth of preparation. I think it’s fair to say that that arrangement worked very well.” Anand said.
In 2015, The Polish grandmaster was Anand’s second as the Indian chess wizard was preparing for that year’s world championship. A second in chess another professional player who helps a higher-rated player prepare for tournaments.
Other than coaching the young Indian talent, WACA also helps in identifying and polishing the key areas of these chess chess prodigies and make them world beaters.
” In fact, that was WACA mission. We saw that India was producing lots and lots of great talents, but our idea was, what is stopping them going from being some of the best talents in the world to being one of the top players in the world, and the fact that both Gukesh and Pragg (Praggnanandhaa ) and amongst the women, Vaishali are all amongst the top in their field… to nudge them in the right direction” Anand said.
With Gukesh challenging for the world title, WACA has fulfilled one of its main target in half the time. The academy wanted to produce a world championship contender in 10 years.
Anand also shared the conversation that he had with Gukesh when the younger grandmaster suffered a bad outcome at the chess Olympiad.
“I tried to go to his room and tell him he shouldn’t just wave it away. But, you know, acknowledge that it happened, and then try to feel better about it and so on. So I was trying to get him to talk about it, but in fact, his approach was different. He genuinely pushes the past aside and starts again. So after a few minutes, he got bored with me trying to discuss the matter with him, and he said, Let’s go do something else. And that’s when we went off to play table tennis instead.” Anand recalled.
When Gukesh sits opposite to Liren, there will be times when his minds will be clouded by apprehensions and nervousness. So what can he learn from Anand?
” I think, in my experience, and you know, one of the things I’ve learned is that people react to this very, very differently and deal with it in different ways. But my own feeling is that I should acknowledge it’s real, try to come to terms with it, especially the fact that it’s happened and it be counterproductive to deal with it now. So I mentally try to make a few notes so that I can park the problem and then I force myself to think of the next game. One of the worst mistakes you can make, in my opinion, is to spend so much time thinking of what has happened that you lose the next game as well. That’s really silly, and so that’s always what I try to fight against. But every person deals with this in their own private way.” Anand said.
Anand has always been open to learning and he has even learnt from his fiercest rivals.
” the lesson that stood out is their openness to ideas, their willingness to learn new things. When you get tired of that, it usually suggests that you’re tired of chess as well. You have to be willing to acknowledge that new things will keep turning up, and you have to learn and especially we live in a time where computers uncover so many new details that that flexibility is the most important thing,” Anand said before signing off.
