Legendary Hungarian GM Lajos Portisch, my sister Judit, and of course the reigning World Champion Vishy Anand in Budapest at the Aquaprofit Press Conference (held at the world famous Hotel Gellert in Budapest)

As part of the press conference, there was an official and ceremonial “signing of contract” between the Aquaprofit (Tamas Nadasi) and Anand.

Anand has joined Aquaprofit’s chess team (the current Hungarian National Team Champion) a year ago, although he has not played yet a single game for the team. On the other hand, the renewed contract specifies that he will actually play at least one game representing Aquaprofit in the next season. Now, Aquaprofit can take pride of having 8 national top players on their roster, including Anand.

Anand when asked how he motivates himself now that he is already WC, he said “I just want to play good chess and enjoy the game, then the results and everything else will fall into place”.

Portisch congratulated Anand, and expressed his special pleasure and satisfaction to finally see a non-Soviet WC. He mentioned that he fought all his life against the Soviets, often needing to deal with “internal games”. This is similar to the stories Bobby Fischer used to tell me.

Portisch also revealed a semi-secret that in the next Chess Olympiad, he may be the Team Captain for the Hungarian National team.

Judit was asked about how hard it is to combine motherhood with top level competitive chess. Her response was: “I keep training and now that my kids are older (3 and 5 year old), I plan a comeback!”

On a funny note, one of the journalists asked Vishy how do Hungarians checkmate in 2 in Blitz with K on e5, R on h1 versus a Black King on e7? Both Portisch and Anand were puzzled and could not come up wit the solution. The answer is: Play convincingly Rh1-h8 and shout CHECK real loud. After Ke8, Ke6 checkmate! …. Hungarian humor 🙂

Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
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