Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game

Conversations with Tyler

Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2023

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A five-time World Chess Champion, Vishy became India's first grandmaster at age 18, spurring a chess revolution in the country. Now 53, he is still a world top ten player and has been India's number one ranked player for 37 years. As newer talents emerge and old ones retire, Anand's continued excellence showcases an endurance seldom seen.

Tyler and Vishy sat down in Chennai to discuss his breakthrough 1991 tournament win in Reggio Emilia, his technique for defeating Kasparov in rapid play, how he approached playing the volatile but brilliant Vassily Ivanchuk at his peak, a detailed breakdown of his brilliant 2013 game against Levon Aronian, dealing with distraction during a match, how he got out of a multi-year slump, Monty Python vs. Fawlty Towers, the most underrated Queen song, how far to take chess opening preparation, which style of chess will dominate in the next ten years, how AlphaZero changes what we know about the game, the key to staying a top ten player at age 53, why he thinks he's a worse loser than Kasparov, qualities he looks for in talented young Indian chess players, picks for the best places to eat in Chennai, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded August 7th, 2023.

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Special thanks to Nabeel Qureshi for his help with the video and transcript.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,
0:09.5	bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.
0:13.6	Learn more at mercatis.org.
0:16.4	For a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit ConversationsWithThyler.com.
0:26.3	Hello, everyone, and welcome back to ConversationsWithThyler.
0:30.1	Today, I'm honored to be in Chennai with Bishi Anand,
0:33.6	five-time world chess champion, and one of the greatest chess players of all time.
0:37.7	Bishi, welcome.
0:39.2	Thank you, Tyler.
0:40.2	Let's go back in time, 1991.
0:42.6	You're playing in Reggio Emilia, arguably the strongest tournament of all time when it happened.
0:47.4	Carp office there, Casparov, even Polugewski shows up, right?
0:51.6	And you win.
0:53.0	What was the change in you that enabled you to be in a position to win that tournament?
0:57.0	I think it's just the work I'd been doing had kind of accumulated and had hit a certain level.
1:01.8	So to give you some background, I qualified for the candidates for the first time in the
1:06.6	Inter-Zonal in Manila in 1990, about July 1990.
1:11.4	And Reggio Emilia was a year and a half later.
1:14.5	So for the first time, I started to work seriously on my openings.
1:18.4	I got together some trainers.
1:21.1	The training will look very funny to modernize, but back then, it was considered, let's say,
1:26.2	what is it they would do to you?
	...

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