Kasparov-sized hole in Anand’s impressive CV

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India’s pride Viswanathan Anand is a four-time world chess champion.

He will be gunning for his fifth title this month. While he has achieved success in different formats and stayed in the top five in Fide ranking for more than a decade, one living player who is still considered greater than the Indian genius is Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov.

If Bobby Fischer single-handedly fought for the betterment of chess players and helped the game grow richer, Kasparov went a step further to make chess professional and helped to take it to every household. Similarly, Anand’s rise led to a big chess revolution in India.

The only big series the two played was the PCA world chess championship in 2005 when Kasparov defeated a younger Anand.

With Kasparov’s subsequent retirement from the game to enter politics, the Indian champion lost an opportunity to settle scores.

“Anand would beat Kasparov if they were to play today,” says Chennai GM Krishnan Sasikiran. “At that time, Anand was less experienced. He was still on the learing curve. Today Kasparov has retired and so we cannot speculate,” he added.

Pointing out that Kasparov still has a huge rating (2812 elo) and plays impressive games, Sasikiran felt the scales would still be in favour of Anand, as he works more on the game now compared to the Russian.

Recently in an interview to WhyChess, former world champion Vladimir Kramnik stated that he considered Viswanathan Anand as a colossal talent and one of the greatest in the history of the game.

“I think in terms of play Anand is in no way weaker than Kasparov, but he’s simply a little lazy, relaxed and only focuses on matches.

“In the last 5-6 years he’s made a qualitative leap that’s made it possible to consider him one of the greatest chess players…” Kramnik noted in that interview.

He said Anand has matured now, while previously he lacked the character to become world champion. “I remember in 1995 against Kasparov it was enough just to poke him a little and he simply fell apart,” he added.

However, today, the younger crop of GMs in the country want their hero to take on the world’s top rated player Magnus Carlsen (2835 elo) of Norway in a championship series.

“We are all waiting to see Carlsen play Anand (2791 elo). Even in this current world championship cycle, GM Levon Aronian (2825 elo) of Armenia would have been a difficult opponent for Anand. Israel’s Boris Gelfand (2727) was a surprise challenger,” said GM B. Adhiban.

(Viswanathan Anand will be playing Israeli GM Boris Gelfand at Moscow from May 11 for his fifth world title).