Musings on Chaturanga-7        Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan                         Indian teams appear to be doing well at Mamallapuram. The fact that we are not underdogs now tells us the story of where we are today. Today’s millennials and GenZees are ready yo take the plunge into sports and games as a career. Those days the sportsmen never ignored studies. Venkataraghavan, Prasanna, Srikkanth and Kumble were engineers. Today most IPL players have conveniently dropped out of school like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Parents too are goading their children as there is no ‘risk’ associated as much as before. Or do they believe. Times they are a changing!

Musings on Chaturanga-7

Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan

 

 

 

 

Indian teams appear to be doing well at Mamallapuram. The fact that we are not underdogs now tells us the story of where we are today. Today’s millennials and GenZees are ready yo take the plunge into sports and games as a career. Those days the sportsmen never ignored studies. Venkataraghavan, Prasanna, Srikkanth and Kumble were engineers. Today most IPL players have conveniently dropped out of school like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Parents too are goading their children as there is no ‘risk’ associated as much as before. Or do they believe. Times they are a changing!

 

Chess.com: What did your parents make of chess as a career? Did they or you ever worry about the security of life as a chess player?

 

My parents may have had doubts because my father worked in the railways. They had no idea what this chess was. But they went with the flow, they knew I loved it, so they held back from saying anything.

 

As for job security, I feel that in the end, chess is no more or no less risky than any other career. Nowadays I tell people, in which career do you have any sort of job security? These days we have to be on our feet a lot. And I can invariably pose this question back to the journalist asking me. What does job security look like in your profession?

 

 

 

 

 

Chess.com: Many people have said how remarkable it is that you’re still competing at the top level at 50. So many of your rivals from the 1990s and 2000s have either retired or slipped down the rankings. What keeps you going?

 

Vishy Anand: Like everyone, I think it comes as a shock to realize that people suddenly see you as the veteran. One day you’re 20, and the next day you’re 50. I remember being surrounded by [Jan] Tinman, Kasparov, [Anatoly] Karpov and they were all older. Then you don’t notice, and one day you realize everyone’s younger than you. And then, you realize everyone’s much younger than you.

 

Even now, when I met [Alireza] Firouzja, was shocked to find he was born three years after I’d been world champion for the first time in 2000, and now we are competing. I understand that cuts me some slack, and I also try to be a little more forgiving of myself if I don’t have a good event. But you can’t take that too far. Either you play as if it matters or you don’t.

 

 

 

 

 

Last year I interviewed Anish Giri, who put your longevity in the game as down to being “truly young at heart,” and said: “Vishy is the kind of guy who I am sure updates all the apps on his phone.” Is this true?

I actually read that, and I laughed my head off. I couldn’t think what exactly updating your apps had to do with youth, but he hit the nail on the head. I do obsessively update my apps and software. I have no idea why, sometimes it’s just boredom! But it was a very cute way of expressing it. After I read the interview, I showed him my phone and said: “See, all the apps are updated!”

 

Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov was the 12th world champion and reigned from 1975 to 1985 while also being the FIDE world champion from 1993 to 1999. Karpov was an exceptionally well-rounded player, but his specialty was positional binds, prophylactic play, and wonderful endgame technique.

Karpov became world champion by default when Bobby Fisher withdrew from their 1975 match  because his demands weren’t met. Karpov defended his crown by defeating Grand Master Victor Korchnoi in 1978 and again in 1981. In 1984 Karpov would have his first meeting with Kasparov, and the chess world was changed forever.

 

 

 

 

In the first of five matches between the two legendary titans, the match was called early with Karpov leading five wins, three losses, and 40 draws. In 1985 Kasparov defeated Karpov and claimed the chess crown. They played again in 1986, 1987 and 1990 and when their matches were concluded their lifetime record in world championship matches was 19 wins for Karpov, 21 wins for Kasparov and 104 draws!

 

In 1993 Kasparov broke away from FIDE (creating the PCA), and Karpov became the FIDE world champion. Karpov defended his FIDE world champion title by defeating Grand Master Jan Timman in 1983, Grand Master Gata Gamsky  in 1996 and Anand in 1998 (on tiebreaks). Karpov refused to play in the 1999 FIDE world championship tournament after FIDE changed their rules.

 

 

 

Karpov’s legendary games continue to be a source of inspiration for all positional and endgame players today. Tibor Karolyi’s two-volume work titled Karpov’s Strategic Wins is considered one of the best chess books ever written.

 

For those unfamiliar with the rating system of chess, a very basic explanation is that your “rating” is represented by a number, with higher representing a stronger player. When you win, you gain ratings points and when you lose, your rating lowers.

 

 

 

 

A criminal named Claude Bloodgood managed to achieve the second highest rating in the USA at the time through either scamming the system or (as he states it) simply playing the only opposition he was allowed. Since he was in prison for life, the only opponents available to him were other inmates, several of whom he had taught to play. As well as playing correspondence games, he was far and away the strongest chess player within the prison system and as such his rating continued to rise.

 

It reached such a level that had he not been incarcerated, he would have to have been invited to the highest-level chess tournament in the country at the time. Bloodgood insisted he had not cheated his rating in any way and instead pointed out that the current system was prone to exploitation in circumstances like his own. The ratings system was altered to account for situations like his. Bloodgood died in 2004, still behind bars.

 

 

 

 

 

In Sherlock Holmes : A Game of Shadows, during the climactic confrontation with Professor James Moriarty, the two men play a game of chess. While the entirety of the game is not shown on camera, the endgame is partially seen and then described as the pair stop moving the pieces and instead just call out their proposed moves to one another.

 

There are several actions on the board that reflect what is happening in the plot. Sherlock sacrifices his Queen and Moriarty points out that he has just lost his most valuable piece. Holmes counters that sometimes a sacrifice has to be made to win overall and the end result of the game is Moriarty losing via checkmate. Sherlock Holmes ends up sacrificing himself (the most valuable piece) in order to foil Moriarty’s plot.

 

 

 

 

The game they play out, at least what we are shown of it, is very reminiscent of a match between Bent Larsen and Tigran Petrosian played in 1966. The moves called out are all legal, reasonably sensible and do indeed result in a fairly nasty discovered checkmate along the H file.When compared to how a lot of movies represent chess, this big-budget film uses it extremely well – and accurately.

 

There has long been an association (rightly or wrongly) between chess and intelligence. Many celebrities have been fans of the game or players themselves to varying degrees. It could be argued that GM Hikaru Nakamura, with his streaming on Twitch, has become a mainstream name outside of the chess world.

 

The current world champion is Norwegian player Magnus Carlsen. He played a friendly blitz game against Bill Gates in 2014 where he allowed the world’s richest man the white pieces and two minutes on his clock compared to Magnus’ 30 seconds. Despite this, Bill was soundly defeated with Magnus only using 12 seconds of his time but admitting that he did so with “a cheap trick”.

 

 

 

The annotation for the game is readily available and it should be pointed out that what Magnus played was in no way illegal, just likely to get him crushed by a Grandmaster of similar level to him.

 

Both of boxing’s Klitschko brothers are chess enthusiasts, Woody Harrelson is believed to be reasonably strong as well as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Humphrey Bogart was believed to be rated 2100 or so, a seriously strong player by any standard.

 

There is to much more.

 

( Author of Mahakavi Bharathiyar, Kalaimagal Publications, to be published on 15th Aug,2022- and practising advocate in the Madras High Court)

 

 

 

 

 

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