Bengaluru: You make the summit, win the biggest crown there is in chess at the ridiculous age of 18, only to be told: ‘Lovely, now do it again.’
D Gukesh has the onerous job to do in two months’ time. His form since the World Championship two years ago has been worrying. Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand is in the unique position to understand what it feels like. “But he’s experiencing it for the first time. You have no idea why the world refuses to work like it used to. You’re working as hard as you think. You want it, you think. But the world is just not bending in the way it used to. What worked for him when he was struggling was acceptance. “What I did was simply thinking, well, this is not what I envisaged, but this is where we are. The World championship starts in a week. I’m going to put my best foot forward there. I think it’s also an appreciation that you’re not entered annually into the World Championship. There’s a long runway to it. I stopped thinking of it. But then, game seven happens. “It’s only with hindsight we plug it into the same pattern. Otherwise, every tournament is a fresh start. In my mind, the universe is not cooperating. When I get lucky, I think, ‘this is how it should be’. Self-deception is what we’re good at. He could be incredibly happy with one game and that might change his mood. It doesn’t matter. As long as you feel better, that’s all that matters.”
The defending world champion, now 20, plays Uzbekistan’s Javokhir Sindarov in an attempt to hold on to the title. “I blocked everything out in Moscow (vs Boris Gelfand in 2012). After six consecutive draws in the match, Anand lost Game 7. He went on to pull himself together, win Game 8 and later win the match.
So that’s how I dealt with it.
“What Gukesh is experiencing, I’ve experienced a couple of times,” Anand told journalists. “Some unexpected gift in a tournament is all I need,” Anand said, “Because in my mind, I’m not playing badly because I deserve to.
Gukesh will play the Olympiad in Samarkand later this month, his final tournament appearance before the match. Anand (PBG Alaskan Knights) began his Tech Mahindra Global Chess League campaign with a loss to Sindarov (Fyers American Gambits) on the Icon board on Saturday while Magnus Carlsen (Alpine APL Pipers) drew against Maxime-Vachier Lagrave (CheQ Mumbai Masters).
