Sport – Chess

It has been a reasonable year: Anand.

Arvind Aaron

Chennai: “It was a reasonable year,” said World chess champion Viswanathan Anand about the year which has gone by.

He has completed all the tournament engagements for the year and would be playing next in the Corus tournament at Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands early next year before defending his World title against Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria in Sofia.

About his best result of 2009, Anand was very quick to pick the 5-3 match victory over Peter Leko at Miskolc (Hungary) on June 7.
Future plans

On the question of retirement and what he will be doing two years from now, Anand said he will still be playing chess. “My future plans for the year will depend on what will happen at Sofia.”

Anand, who will turn 40 on Friday, visited the National premier women’s championship and watched all the 12 games.

Babu Manoharan, Director, St. Joseph’s College of Engineering greeted the champion who was accompanied by his wife Aruna.

Asked to comment on the allegations of World No.2 ranked women’s player Koneru Humpy against the All India Chess Federation, Anand said: “It appears resolved and settled for some time now.”

Anand said he expects many young players to close the wide gap between K. Sasikiran, P. Harikrishna and the rest of the players ranked below them. He picked out Abhijeet Gupta and Parimarjan Negi of Delhi as youngsters with immense potential. On how he motivates himself after achieving almost everything in chess, the champion replied that playing for the world title itself is the biggest motivation. “If that can’t motivate you, you can’t be a chess player,” he said.

Source: http://www.hindu.com/2009/12/09/stories/2009120955211600.htm

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