CALCULATED: Viswanathan Anand strongly believes that India has enough talent to produce the next World Chess Champion but not before 2025 because there is no “faster path” and the process to create one will take that long.
Anand began grooming and mentoring the next batch of chess prodigies at his Westbridge Anand Chess Academy (WACA) after COVID-19 induced the first lockdown in 2020.
Six of India’s Gen-Next talents — Nihal Sarin, R Praggnanandhaa, Raunak SadhwaniD Gukesh and R Vaishali and Arjun Erigiasi were inducted – when WACA started in December 2020.
from Praggnanandhaa (prague in the chess fraternity) the personal trainer, however, is RB Ramesh.
“If you want the official title, it will be 2025 at the earliest. There is no faster route, which gives us a lot of time to prepare, but there are a lot of details in there”, Anand told PTI during a virtual interaction on Wednesday.
With Magnus Carlsen refusing to defend his title, the 2023 World Championship will be played between the first two Candidates and it is only from the next cycle that Gukesh and Praggu will be able to compete for honors.
Anand’s goal is not to help an Indian win a world title but to create a pool of players to make India a “chess superpower”.
“The world championship cycle, let’s see what shape it takes in the next 1-2 years and so on. But the world championship is just icing on the cake. We should aim for the cake, just becoming stronger, making progress.
“If you’re strong enough, you’re ready for anything out there, that’s my attitude. It’s going to be very difficult to predict what form of things the chess world is changing very quickly these days,” he said. he added.
Chess Olympiad showed that India is an emerging chess superpower
India finished with an unprecedented nine medals, including a first-ever bronze by the women’s team at the Chess Olympiad, which gave Anand great hope.
India’s B team consisting of Gukesh, Nihal, Praggu and Raunak won a bronze medal in the open section and Anand thinks it’s ‘no coincidence’.
“I certainly think we contributed to that. Of course, you have to praise their individual coaches, their families and their own work. But I think we certainly contributed to that.
“There was a period where they were all promising youngsters and I think they haven’t lost in the last three years and made significant progress, all of them with that kind of systematic work.”
“The results of the Olympiad show it more or less (India is becoming a chess superpower) but there are many areas to work on and there are a lot of competitions. I would like to keep my footing on the accelerator, we have to keep pushing on it.”
For Anand, the performance is all the more commendable as it was a junior team.
“You can hardly ignore that basically our junior team, which was only fielded because we could field a second team as hosts, won a bronze medal and actually missed out on gold. That’s quite a story. It’s no coincidence.”
Emphasis will be on fitness, tournament specific training
Anand hopes to help deliver more tournament-specific training and focus on improving fitness in the coming days.
“For the tournaments, if we are going to play against Wijk aan Zee (Tata Steel Chess), or any major event in an online series, you should be able to train a bit exclusively for it.
“I also want to expand the program a bit more so we can see each other a bit more often, and put more emphasis on physical fitness (with smartwatches), psychological training, because the needs change.”
For Anand, it was important that he didn’t waste time during the peak months of the pandemic, as the Academy was up and running in December 2020.
“My first goal was not to spoil the pandemic, there was a lot of failure online, that’s good for some things.
“I saw it as an opportunity to play chess and be ready for bigger tournaments when they happen. Praggu and Nihal were just above the ELO rating of 2600 at this point. Arjun, Gukesh and Raunak were valued at 2500 and something.
“Once the academy became functional, with improved supervision, all students improved their ELO rating.
“Very quickly everyone’s scoring chart took off, they started having very, very successful results. We were ahead of the targets, at this point we were talking about 2615 and how to get there and so on. Everyone was going through that pretty quickly.
“Now we have Gukesh, Arjun who has a rating of over 2700. Praggu has mainly beaten Magnus five times, the biggest of the standard achievements. He is doing very well and also very close to 2700 now. He is a very good progress,” Anand said. .
One-two tournaments a year, so I don’t forget chess
So what awaits Anand, the player?
“It’s just playing one or two good tournaments a year because if I don’t play often enough I forget what practical chess looks like… It’s important to have at least some familiarity and try to play well, to keep my level. I would say that’s where I am at the moment,” he concluded.
Anand began grooming and mentoring the next batch of chess prodigies at his Westbridge Anand Chess Academy (WACA) after COVID-19 induced the first lockdown in 2020.
Six of India’s Gen-Next talents — Nihal Sarin, R Praggnanandhaa, Raunak SadhwaniD Gukesh and R Vaishali and Arjun Erigiasi were inducted – when WACA started in December 2020.
from Praggnanandhaa (prague in the chess fraternity) the personal trainer, however, is RB Ramesh.
“If you want the official title, it will be 2025 at the earliest. There is no faster route, which gives us a lot of time to prepare, but there are a lot of details in there”, Anand told PTI during a virtual interaction on Wednesday.
With Magnus Carlsen refusing to defend his title, the 2023 World Championship will be played between the first two Candidates and it is only from the next cycle that Gukesh and Praggu will be able to compete for honors.
Anand’s goal is not to help an Indian win a world title but to create a pool of players to make India a “chess superpower”.
“The world championship cycle, let’s see what shape it takes in the next 1-2 years and so on. But the world championship is just icing on the cake. We should aim for the cake, just becoming stronger, making progress.
“If you’re strong enough, you’re ready for anything out there, that’s my attitude. It’s going to be very difficult to predict what form of things the chess world is changing very quickly these days,” he said. he added.
Chess Olympiad showed that India is an emerging chess superpower
India finished with an unprecedented nine medals, including a first-ever bronze by the women’s team at the Chess Olympiad, which gave Anand great hope.
India’s B team consisting of Gukesh, Nihal, Praggu and Raunak won a bronze medal in the open section and Anand thinks it’s ‘no coincidence’.
“I certainly think we contributed to that. Of course, you have to praise their individual coaches, their families and their own work. But I think we certainly contributed to that.
“There was a period where they were all promising youngsters and I think they haven’t lost in the last three years and made significant progress, all of them with that kind of systematic work.”
“The results of the Olympiad show it more or less (India is becoming a chess superpower) but there are many areas to work on and there are a lot of competitions. I would like to keep my footing on the accelerator, we have to keep pushing on it.”
For Anand, the performance is all the more commendable as it was a junior team.
“You can hardly ignore that basically our junior team, which was only fielded because we could field a second team as hosts, won a bronze medal and actually missed out on gold. That’s quite a story. It’s no coincidence.”
Emphasis will be on fitness, tournament specific training
Anand hopes to help deliver more tournament-specific training and focus on improving fitness in the coming days.
“For the tournaments, if we are going to play against Wijk aan Zee (Tata Steel Chess), or any major event in an online series, you should be able to train a bit exclusively for it.
“I also want to expand the program a bit more so we can see each other a bit more often, and put more emphasis on physical fitness (with smartwatches), psychological training, because the needs change.”
For Anand, it was important that he didn’t waste time during the peak months of the pandemic, as the Academy was up and running in December 2020.
“My first goal was not to spoil the pandemic, there was a lot of failure online, that’s good for some things.
“I saw it as an opportunity to play chess and be ready for bigger tournaments when they happen. Praggu and Nihal were just above the ELO rating of 2600 at this point. Arjun, Gukesh and Raunak were valued at 2500 and something.
“Once the academy became functional, with improved supervision, all students improved their ELO rating.
“Very quickly everyone’s scoring chart took off, they started having very, very successful results. We were ahead of the targets, at this point we were talking about 2615 and how to get there and so on. Everyone was going through that pretty quickly.
“Now we have Gukesh, Arjun who has a rating of over 2700. Praggu has mainly beaten Magnus five times, the biggest of the standard achievements. He is doing very well and also very close to 2700 now. He is a very good progress,” Anand said. .
One-two tournaments a year, so I don’t forget chess
So what awaits Anand, the player?
“It’s just playing one or two good tournaments a year because if I don’t play often enough I forget what practical chess looks like… It’s important to have at least some familiarity and try to play well, to keep my level. I would say that’s where I am at the moment,” he concluded.