| Meet
Vishy Anand @ Advance Chess, Leon 2002  Grandmasters Viswanathan Anand and Vladimir Kramnik played a six game
match in Advance Chess at Leon from 21st to 23rd June 2002. The unique thing of this championship in Rapid Chess is that both the Grandmasters were allowed to use
their respective computers/software's during the actual games. Anand, three times winner at Leon, lost the third game and eventually the coveted title to Vladimir Kramnik. Our Special Correspondent Vijay
Kumar, covering the Championship at Leon, spoke to Vishy immediately after his first
title loss at Leon.
Vijay : Vishy…You are considered the strongest Chess Player with Computer, how than this loss in Advance Chess ?
Anand : I think in general people tend to overestimate the importance of the computer in the competitions. You can do a lot of things with the computer but you still have to play good chess. I more or less manage to do so except for this third game. In such a short match, against a very solid and hard to beat an
opponent, this turned out to be a too much but I don’t really feel like that the computer alone can change the objective true to the position.
Vijay : We all thought you were better in the first game. What happened?
Anand: I was not better in the first game as it looked like.
In fact black has a very dangerous initiative as you saw on both the screens right then and
there [at the venue].
Vijay : Two Queen pawns and one King pawn with white in the first game. Was it a part of a plan to surprise Kramnik?
Anand: Yes, in general Kramnik’s openings against the King Pawn tend to be very very dry and especially I wanted to try and find some way to bring the computer into this, though in general I would say my opening preparation was not of the level required. Somehow I kept making lots of mistakes in the opening creating more problems
later. So most probably that was the main reason for my defeat and I think that now I will try to spend some time working on my openings because I really need to overhaul them.
 Vijay: Apart from the first and third game all the other games were pretty dry. Any comment.
Anand: His style [Kramnik] is like that . He is very difficult…I mean if you get an opponent like Shirov or Topolov the game just gets very interesting but Kramnik’s style is just very very dry …as you can see in the third game there are many many attacking lines he could have gone for but he goes for the end game…so
it is very difficult to find him in that sense.
Vijay : Advance Chess has been your favorite cup of tea for such a long time . What do you think was the basic reason behind this OFF FORM here.
Anand: Well you know I am good in Advance chess…I am also good in Rapid Chess but it does not mean you are going to win everything especially if you make mistakes and I think this is also underestimated that people like Kramnik ….they are not handicapped in any way with the computer, they also grew up with it. It is only
against someone of the generation like
Karpov that you can really feel the difference because they have not used the computer that
much. But in this generation that we have now, everybody just grew up with the
computer and ok may be I handle the machine more fluently but still you have to play chess and find ideas and incase you are not in good shape than this wont happen. So I don’t consider that I have such a big advantage in Advance Chess as everybody thinks. In the last few years I won because I played better Chess and this year it was not the case.
 Vijay: You have now this Rapid Match planned against your successor Ruslan Ponomariov in Mainz, Germany. How do you look at it?
Anand: Well…I have a whole one month before that ..so probably what I need to do is to train and clearly this match [against Kramnik] has shown that my openings can be very very shaky for a match. May be I have been playing too many tournaments and I think it is time to really do a overhaul. I have been working constantly and I have lots of ideas but may be I have to tie loose ends and to get the whole picture organized. What happened in the
third game should not be repeated because it is the line I knew it is nothing difficult about it. I had the feeling that I have checked it but I
haven't. So this sort of things have to be avoided.
Vijay: What do you like better Advance Chess or Rapid Chess ?
Anand: I like both. It is boring to play Slow Chess all the time. It is nice to change some time.
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