While everyone complains about Vishy Anand not playing aggressively, here is what I think: While Vishy Anand plays his World Championship match in Chennai, I too am playing a GM open tournament in the same city. Now I was 2/3. A pretty decent score. In the 4th round I faced a GM and in a superb position, I blundered and lost. With my score 2/4, I tried for a win in the 5th game at all costs. I wanted to make up for my yesterdays loss in a winning game. But things didnt work out and I was badly crushed by a 2200 player. I was now 2/5. I had lost a lot of rating points and I wanted to badly make up. I went all broke in game 6 and it was obvious that this desperation was not going to work. My opponent simply won and left me with a dismal score of 2/6. I started to think, What exactly is going wrong here? Maybe I wanted to win all the games but my confidence levels werent high enough. Chess, my friends is not like cricket or football, where your physical energy and enthusiasm can sometimes outrun your mental capability. In chess if one is mentally unstable, unable to concentrate or has lack of faith on his abilities, he just cannot play his best chess. The game is so closely related to your state of mind that you just cannot ignore what you feel mentally. Thus, I decided to play safe in game 7, made a draw and got back my lost confidence. This resulted in me winning the 8th and 9th game! Now of course my situation is not even close to Anands level. While he plays Magnus, I played not as strong opposition. But my point is simple. Anand after losing games 5 and 6 didnt trust his abilities to go all in for game 7 and 8. I think if he would have done that, It could have been possible that he would have lost 2 more games. Like a true champion, who is objective rather than emotional, Anand drew games 7 and 8. The crowd didnt like it. But Anand gained back his confidence levels. No longer will he be thinking of the terrible blunder in the rook endgame or the missed chance of Ra1. Now he is fresh for game 9. I do not say that Anands strategy was correct or that he will now win today. But I want people to understand that there was a logic behind why Anand played so tamely in game 7 and 8. Carlsen is the favourite to win right now, theres no denying that but today game 9 will be interesting as I am sure, the fresh and motivated Vishy Anand will do all that he has in his powers to score the elusive victory!!
Posted on: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 07:25:07 +0000
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