Team of rivals: 2

Part one of the Vishy Anand interview on Chessbase [posted yesterday] was totally fascinating.

Here’s the equally insightful part two — where he talks of mice machines, and men, and the mysteries of match prep. Enjoy.

Addendum: Team of Rivals

Further to the earlier post on Anand and his “human cluster”, this: in the interview, Vishy acknowledges the work put in by Anish Giri, the Dutch chess prodigy who in January 2009 became the youngest ever grandmaster. For the chess fans among you — and it’s a pleasant surprise to see how many there are — one of Giri’s hobbies is annotating great chess games. And here, with his commentary, is game 12 of the FIDE face off between Anand and Topalov. Here’s Giri on game 2, when Anand played a beauty to level the scores. [Bonus — a database of 150 of Giri’s tournament games to date].

Team of rivals

Vladimir Kramnik [who has a thing about Topalov]. Garry Kasparov [who would like nothing better than a 2012 title fight between Anand and the current world number one]. Magnus Carlsen [said current world number one, and the logical contender for the title]. An array of past and future champions rallying behind Vishy Anand during the recent FIDE world chess championship title fight against Topalov.

Tempted to post clips — but this interview with Vishy deserves to be read in full. Go read.

Blood sport

I hadn’t thought it could be done [or at least, that I’d do it], but I spent the better part of seven hours last evening frantically refreshing the browser, desperate to catch each move of the 9th game in the Anand-Topalov world championship title match. If you haven’t already, try replaying the game here — this is chess as blood sport, with ingenuity and human frailty [who, for instance, would have thought that Anand, who around move 20 had 30 minutes more than his rival on his clock, would run into time trouble and in his hurry, miss what seemed a winning move?] on display in equal measure in a game where the two combatants took turns to dominate before the game finally came to an exhausted standstill.

Unrelated — earlier posts, on Feynman and Kasparov. Also read, chess with Kubrick.