Devil's Advocate: Viswanathan Anand on mind games

GAMES PEOPLE PLAY: Anand believes "cricket is a fact of life" in India but the country has not ignored him.

          

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Keywords: Vladimir Kramnik, Chess

Viswanathan Anand: Basically. That is when all the mind games happen—the idea of getting into the opponent’s skin and bringing out the mistakes. Things like nervousness, cracking under pressure, all that—you have to build up the pressure both off the board and on it.

Karan Thapar: So how do you protect yourself from your opponent?

Viswanathan Anand: One of the things I remember is how Victor Korchnoi in 1978 got obsessed that his opponent had put shrinks in the audience and they were staring at him. It later turned out to be mainly in his imagination but it did affect him. So, no longer matters whether those people were there or not.

I have always thought that somebody in the audience is looking at me. But the trick is just look at the board and forget about the rest. After a while he can’t affect you anymore. That is my preferred method.

There are others who look there, see that person, get angry and feed on it. If that works for you, go for it. But it doesn’t work for me; I like to sort of block out everything I don’t want to deal with and try to just focus on the board. Sometimes if there is someone you really dislike then you play them and get extra motivation by just thinking what it would be like to beat them. But generally I would like to block someone out.

Karan Thapar: But dislike can be a motivation?

Viswanathan Anand: Yes, definitely and it helps you concentrate much more. When I play someone I dislike I really don’t want to make mistakes; then your mind hardly ever wanders.

Karan Thapar: You have got a big match coming up in October, when you have to defend your World Championship title. (Russian Grand Master Vladimir) Kramnik has challenged you. Do you dislike him enough to want to beat him?

Viswanathan Anand: I think as the match goes along these feelings will inevitably surface but at the moment we are both not going down that road yet. But I am sure as the match comes along we will feel it.

Karan Thapar: You are not going down the road, but he has spent a lot of time taunting you. He says publicly that he has only allowed you to borrow, or he has lent you the World Championship.

Viswanathan Anand: He went down this road for a week, I replied and the matter just died. As far as I know neither of us has spoken much about that. I think it will probably surface again in July-August.

Karan Thapar: Something else he said was that there is a difference between winning a championship at a tournament and winning it in a match. In 2007 you won it in a tournament and in 2008 you have to defend it in a match. Will that make it difficult for you?

Viswanathan Anand: My own tendency is to just ignore him and to think well, that is what he would say. I would think what else would he say for he didn’t win the tournament and leave it at that. But once the match starts you have to make sure that these sort of things don’t affect you.

My own response to that is: the winner can say anything he wants after the match and the loser would have lost interest in this topic. So the main thing is to win. If I win it hardly matters what my opinion is or what his opinion is. Let’s just win.