Occasionally, even Viswanathan Anand gets shocked. The five-time world champion has seen all kinds of hell break loose on the chess board. But there is a certain rumbling in the air when the storm clouds start to gather over the chessboard.
Thursday was not shaping up to be one of those days. That’s why Anand was at his home keeping only half an eye on game 14 of the World Chess Championship battle between Gukesh and Ding Liren when the world of chess changed in the blink of an eye.
In a single move of his rook, Ding had opened the door for Gukesh to become the 18th world champion of the sport.
“Sometimes history walks in when you are not expecting it to. Like on Thursday. I was kind of just sitting around, not watching the 14th World Championship game live in the end game. I was expecting it to end in a draw at some point and the match to continue in tiebreaks on the next day. I was still following the game. But you know how it is, you put your attention into doing something else at home, and you glance from time to time at the game to see what’s happening, then you go back to doing something else,” recollected Anand in an interview with The Indian Express.
He added: “Then suddenly, I see that Ding Liren has blundered his way into a lost game with a king and pawn ending. Boom! It went up. That was quite dramatic. In a few seconds, everything changed.”
Gukesh’s rise to the top has stunned everyone in the sport. Success in chess comes much earlier than in most sports, but a teenager becoming the world champion is still unprecedented.
“18 is just an unbelievable age to become a world champion. I think what made him succeed in the end was his attitude. In Singapore, he just came ready to fight in each of the 14 games. Gukesh’s opponent Ding seemed to hesitate a bit in many games. In the 14th game, he tried a bit too hard to get a draw. He was still a bit conflicted. Gukesh kept trying every day to get a win. And in the end, his perseverance and his attitude were rewarded,” said Anand.
Enough has been spoken about the role Anand has played in Gukesh’s career. But it’s still not enough. After Gukesh’s win, Anand opened up to The Indian Express about the bond that the duo shares.
The boy who would be King@FIDE_chess @WacaChess pic.twitter.com/kN8eG7fijq
— Viswanathan Anand (@vishy64theking) December 13, 2024
“The thing with Gukesh is I’m quite close to him. We speak a lot. We hang out at tournaments. He’s a fun guy. Laughs a lot, is very good company and I’ve always enjoyed that. Besides that, I know his team well. Gukesh and I often sit and discuss chess. Every time he gets back home to Chennai, he often calls me and says, ‘Sir, I want to share my thoughts’, and we would go over stuff together. All these things I enjoy very much with him,” Anand said.
As Gukesh tried to chart his way to the throne, Anand added that the teenager would seek him out to pick on his brain. Just trying to get lessons from Anand’s career.
“Just things like ‘What were you thinking in this moment of your career?’ I think he was looking to get a sense of what my journey was like. Literally, he could imagine it happening to him a few months later. He would kind of just ask me what getting to the throne and staying there has been like. I told him many times, you know, things have changed: The way you train for the match, the openings you play, all that will be very different from what I did. But my experiences will be what you will most benefit from. We shared a lot of conversations like that. We also looked at some stuff on the board,” added Anand.
In the pandemic, Anand started the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy (WACA) — inspired by the Botvinnik School of Chess and the Samford Fellowship — where some of the brightest chess players in the country like Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa get training sessions from elite grandmasters like Boris Gelfand and Arthur Yusupov among others. But through WACA, Anand also ensured that a lot of the expenses that Gukesh incurred on his way to becoming the world champion, were taken care of.
“Through WACA, we gave him whatever support he needed, especially over the last year because the World Championship has many, many demands. Just literally whatever he asked for, we were able to do for him. I’m happy it paid off right away.
“Over the course of working with him, I had mentioned to Gukesh what I think are the demands of the game at this final frontier: the difficulties he will need to deal with at the world championship. Like the unprecedented amount of stress that a world championship brings along. But we saw in this match, Gukesh was just the better-prepared player. He’s a deserving world champion,” said Anand.
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