Candid interview with Kasparov

Kasparov interviewed by Jan Lagrain of De Schaakfabriek.
Published by Chessvibes.com

You still follow the top tournaments closely?
Yes, I look at all the games quite intensively. Not just because I like to, but this way I can still dedicate myself to chess creatively.”

The Boss does more than just follow the games. He really studies them and still updates his database regularly. “I like chess and I can guarantee you that my database is still up to date. I still search for and find new ideas and I always want to know if one of the current top players found the same ideas. So far this hasn’t happen very much, by the way,” he explains proudly, while looking at the game between Alexei Shirov and his former student Magnus Carlsen.

Carlsen didn’t do well at the Olympiad.
“Indeed, but it doesn’t really surprise me. Magnus is a brilliant player, but he really has to want to work hard. Otherwise he won’t succeed.”

Is that the reason you don’t work together anymore?
“No, that’s not all. It’s a combination of factors. I was very busy with the elections and lacked the time to help him. But I also felt Magnus wanted more freedom. I always gave him advice about openings and it seemed that he sometimes didn’t like it when I pressed him to make certain choices.”

At the Olympiad he surprised a few times with his opening choice, like in his game against Adams, where he answered 1.e4 with 1…g6 followed by some kind of Pirc and a knight that quickly went to h5. What do you think about that?
“I don’t approve of this. In fact I think it’s almost an insult to play such an opening against someone like Adams, a well-known top player. In my opinion Magnus deserved to loose this game. But it comes down to a professional approach. Magnus is capable of beating a ‘normal’ 2700 player without too much trouble, so to speak. He has enough talent to do that. But it’s different at top level. Facing Adams, Jobava, Sjugirov is not the same as facing Kramnik and Anand. He definitely doesn’t have enough ideas, enough chess mass… He’s playing a lot of tournaments now… I’m afraid that by the end of the year he might not be the number one on rating.”

Yesterday he was virtually surpassed by Anand.
“We’ll see. I feel that it’s a great pity because he’s nineteen and nineteen there are… temptations in life. I felt strongly that he needed more guidance. But at the end of the day I… I worked with him and I promised to bring him at the top, so I did. He should be responsible for the rest.”

What do you think of his fashion model career?
“I have to be honest. I think he did very well, because it’s fantastic promotion for chess. But at the same time, if you want to beat players like Kramnik and Anand, you have to be focused 100%. Otherwise it won’t work, especially at important tournaments. So it has a downside and I hope he won’t forget that his chess career will suffer when he doesn’t prepare sufficiently.”

Is it possible that you will cooperate in the future?
It seems unlikely to me now because he has to change his attitude. It depends on whether he’s willing to work hard, and whether I will have enough time. Obviously I would like to provide some more advice because advice, you know, it’s not a tip. It’s really hard work. It needs full dedication. He was dedicated in the spring and summer of 2009. We had a great session in Croatia for almost two weeks so that was a big, big contribution. Then we had a good session in Marrakech, so… it helped, you know. Unless he wants to go back from the fashion world to the hard work… My advice is not like giving advice to a kid you know, it involves work for hours. Unless you work five, six hours a day on a regular basis it doesn’t work. In Croatia we worked with him at least five hours a day, this was the minimum. When you have five hours a day for almost two weeks that’s a lot of work. Plus, it’s not only working hours, but then you do more work, you think about it, so it puts you very much inside the problem.”

What do you think about Anand and Kramnik, are they still…
“Look, Anand is forty. It’s amazing that the generation after me, they’re still on top. It shows that the generation which learnt from Karpov and myself, that grew up with our matches, this generation is still strong. They both work very hard. Kramnik is six years younger than Anand but I think they belong to the same generation, it’s the generation after Kasparov. These two guys are on the top now, they’re doing great, it’s a demonstration. They learnt in the eighties and early nineties. Those players grew up by absorbing the ideas from the K-K matches.”

Here is the full interview.

Special thanks to Peter Doggers for sharing this with us.