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Tag: Vishwanathan Anand

Sports

Four years into Soviet-style chess academy, Anand’s students shine bright: ‘Always available for them’

Back in December 2020, when India’s first Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand started his chess academy, he had a modest dream: someone had “to carry the torch forward”. Three years later, the torch is shining bright, with a queue of contenders ready to take on the mantle.Three students from the online WestBridge Anand Chess Academy’s (WACA) first batch — D Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa and his sister R Vaishali — have qualified for the upcoming Candidates tournament, a prestigious event to figure out the challenger to the reigning world champion. Other promising prodigies at Anand’s academy are Nihal Sarin, Arjun Erigaisi, Raunak Sadhwani and Leon Luke Mendonca. While Arjun is no longer categorised as a junior player, Nihal, Raunak and Leon are — along with Praggnanandhaa and Gukesh — among the T...
Sports

How a story of American ultra-marathon runner and forgetting candidates qualification helped D Gukesh win Chennai Grand Masters

The smile that refused to disappear from D Gukesh’s face said it all. Just a week back, with the pressure of qualifying for the Candidates weighing him down it seemed as if he had even forgotten how to smile. But as he clinched the Chennai Grand Masters event on the final day on Thursday following a drawn game with P Harikrishna, the Candidates is now within touching distance. Of course, he has to wait until the end of World Rapid and Blitz event next week to get official confirmation, but unless Anish Giri, comes up with something special at Samarkand, Gukesh’s – who is still undecided about taking the flight to Uzbekistan — place seems safe for now. Going into the final day, just needing a draw to win the tournament, there were some nervy moments for Gukesh. That his father Rajnikanth...
Sports

‘Cheating is a problem that we have to continue dealing; technology shrinks’: Viswanathan Anand

Even as the world of elite chess continues to grapple with sophisticated cheating techniques and anti-cheating measures, FIDE (International Chess Federation) deputy president Viswanathan Anand held that accusations and counter claims will continue to be part of the board game. While chess is no stranger to claims and counterclaims, this topic grabbed world headlines following Magnus Carlsen’s sensational accusation against United States’ Hans Niemann last September and his subsequent withdrawal from the Sinquefield Cup. “Cheating allegations have been around for a while. But now, everything goes public very fast,” Anand said. “Last year, the Carlsen-Niemann thing lit a fire under this topic. Now, it’s in the air. We continue to work on how to prevent it. It’s a technological thing so i...
Sports

Candidates challenge looms as Praggnanandhaa follows in Vishwanathan Anand’s footsteps | Chess News – Times of India

Alexander Khalifman. Ruslan Ponomariov. Rustam Kasimdzhanov. Levon Aronian. Gata Kamsky. Peter Svidler. Teimour Radjabov. Jan Duda.These players have either won the FIDE World Cup chess title or FIDE knockout World Championship title. But none of the players named above went on to win the World Matchplay title, considered as the Mount Everest of the 64-square sport where Garry Kasparov, Vishwanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen have built their own caves.The Khalifmans and Dudas of this world have not reached even the Challenger status. But Boris Gelfand and Sergei Karjakin - who were also World Cup winners - became the challengers after winning this title. V Anand won the knockout title and then won the Matchplay crown. Kramnik did the reverse. He first became the matchplay champion and th...
Sports

How a trip to Goa for a competition in the 90s resuscitated Levon Aronian’s chess career

When Levon Aronian allows his memory to waft back three decades — back to the early 1990s when he was a ‘skinny boy’ who would always be nibbling on chocolates during chess tournaments — he prefers to look at the start of his chess career and interpret himself as getting lucky.The time Aronian started playing chess was a tumultuous, almost anarchic, time to be in Armenia. The Soviet Union was rapidly crumbling. A bloody conflict raged between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. A devastating earthquake in 1988 had unleashed the fury of nature on the Armenians.To complicate matters for the Aronian family, independence from the Soviet Union meant that young Levon’s parents had to quit their highly-respected jobs at a time when electricity and water shortages were comm...