My strategy was always to take one game at a time, says Viswanathan Anand

The five-time world champion is impressed with the performance of the Indian players so far in the FIDE Candidates Chess tournament at Toronto.

Canada: Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand is the official commentator for the FIDE Candidates Chess tournament at Toronto, Canada, and also has been the mentor for Dommarju Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa and R Vaishali through his WestBridge Anand Chess Academy (WACA).

Interestingly most of the seconds or Team members revealed by Indians (generally there are more who work invisibly or long distance and players maintain secrecy about them) interestingly are connected to Anand, having been a part of his Team during his World Championship campaigns.

Surya Shekhar Ganguly is with Team Vidit, Grzegorz Gajewski has been roped in by Gukesh and Sandipan Chanda is assisting Vaishali. Peter Svidler, eight time Russian Champion and three- time Candidate and a close friend of Anand is part of Team Praggnanandhaa

Anand has been commentating on the Candidates for the past fortnight and won’t be available to comment on the remaining four games. In an exclusive chat with Deccan Herald, Anand shared his views on the players in fray and how the tournament could be heading.

Q) Which way do you see the last four rounds heading?

A) The tournament is very tense, cannot really make any predictions thanks to yesterday’s  (10^th round) slightly unexpected results because at some time Firouzja and Abasov appeared to have averted trouble but erred allowing  both Nakmamura and Caruana to win and rejoin the racing pack. Gukesh and Nepomniachtchi of course have done well to gain a half point lead.

Q) Any predictions about the eventual winner?

A) The players are too tightly bunched together to really say something. The player who best copes with the pressure and circumstances arising in every round now onwards will end up winner.  In the Women’s section, it is quite clear that the two Chinese women Tan Zhongyi and Lei Tinkjie are setting up the pace. The others have not been able to keep up the scoring and it looks like a two- way battle. Tingjie’s 4.5/5 recent dash means that she has momentum her way but we have to see how it finishes. As for Humpy and Vaishali, they are not really in the race.

Q) How do you look at the performance of Indian players here?

A) All the Indian men have performed incredibly well but have encountered some unexpected setbacks. Gukesh has been is superb form but his unfortunate loss to Firouzja was nothing short of a tragedy, he could have won that game and emerged sole leader. Vidit too has missed a couple of victories as has Pragg who has been in good shape. Vidit has shown great resilience to win three games and is just a point behind the leaders..  But what I really like is that they have shown incredible strength and generally have been very, very impressive. We should not focus on the losses but on the fact that all of them have won 2 games each so far.

Q) Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura have not really got going here?

A) Sometimes when strong players are stuck, they need a lucky break to regain their confidence and get going. The wins posted by Caruana and Nakamura yesterday in the 10^th round may well be, the lucky break that they needed and now on, they could be the players to watch out for!

Q) What was your strategy when you played the Candidates?

A) My strategy was always very simple, just to take one game at a time and just observe things overall. Maybe this also helped me to cope up  with the pressure.