13-05-2025
Why Vishy Anand prescribes a ‘take it easy policy' for teenage world beaters
Does the current generation of teenage prodigies that's in a tearing hurry to complete their hostile takeover of the chess world need to pause every once in a while to recharge their mental batteries? Do Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi and others from their generation like Uzbekistan's Nodirbek Abdusattorov need to manage their work loads?
If you ask Viswanathan Anand, the veritable godfather of Indian chess, they certainly must.
Currently in Bucharest for the ongoing Superbet Chess Classic Romania event, Anand was asked by Cristian Chirila, who is a second to Fabiano Caruana, if the five-time world champion had any advice for the younger generation of stars about what they should focus on while training considering that the international calendar is pregnant with events.
'What should they focus on?' prodded Chirila, asking Anand about the upcoming generation in general without naming any names in particular. It's a question you reckon that a few members of India's golden generation of grandmasters would have asked themselves, if not Anand directly, at some point in the last few years since every tournament organiser — across formats — seemingly wants a piece of the three posterboys of India's golden generation. The proliferation of chess tournaments since the COVID-19 pandemic has happened at a remarkable pace. Just in 2025, events like the Checkmate: India vs USA and chess' entry into the Esports World Cup were announced. The Freestyle Chess organisers also added a four-event Grand Slam Tour.
'My approach would be to simplify my calendar a little bit,' began Anand. 'If you play all of them, then I think you don't get a minute to yourself. I would skip one or two events here or there and just experience everything else.'
Anand's rationale behind this, he elaborated, was simple: 'The question is how to split up your time. That's why I say it's important to give up one or two events somewhere and give yourself a month or two off because you can easily get sucked into playing a lot and then you don't have a minute to yourself to think about anything.'
Anand has a long track record of practising what he preaches. Back in the days when he frequented chess tournaments, he too would take a break from the sport whenever results started to sag.
Anand's advice comes at a poignant time for India's troika of Gukesh, Pragg and Arjun. All three have experienced heady highs in the past few years, but also tasted dizzying dips in forms. Gukesh, for example, almost won the Tata Steel Chess event in Wijk aan Zee right after being crowned as the youngest world champion in chess history. It was a tournament that reaffirmed to the world that the hunger that had propelled the Chennai boy to become a world champion at 18 was still there. But since that event, he's experienced a slump at two freestyle tour events in Weissenhaus and Paris. And at the ongoing Superbet Chess Classic Romania event in Bucharest, he's currently winless after five games, drawing four and losing to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.
Arjun too experienced a dip at the season-opening event in Wijk aan Zee where he laboured to get a win in 11 games of the tournament before finally beating Nodirbek and Gukesh in the final two games of the event. Pragg seemed to have hit a ceiling in the first half of 2023, when he just could not break into the 2700 club. Then, while Gukesh and Arjun broke into 2800, Pragg, the OG teenage prodigy from this generation, was moored in the mid 2700s.
All three have played a heavy amount of chess since the pandemic, sometimes with barely any gap between events. Gukesh, for example, ended the Tata Steel event in Wijk aan Zee (played in classical format) on February 2 and was then playing in the freestyle variant at the Weissenhaus Freestyle Chess tournament five days later. He then played at the freestyle event in Paris, and is now in Romania.
Unlike other sports, mental fatigue is a very real threat in chess. A cricketer or a footballer won't spend hours in training sessions on the day of a game. Chess players do. They would probably feel uneasy walking into the playing hall if they did not prepare their battle plans for hours. World No 1 Magnus Carlsen's choice to play freestyle has also unburdened him from the tedious homework he needed to do otherwise: at freestyle, players only find out what the starting position is 10 minutes before their game, so there's no point preparing for hours leading into a game.
In a special episode of 60 Minutes show on CBS News back in 2012, it was revealed that Magnus Carlsen was spending as much as 200 days a year on the road, playing at tournaments. This was separate from the chess prep he was doing at training camps back home as he prepared for an assault on the world champion's throne in the coming years. Those days were heavy with chess, playing six-hour-long games in the morning and then preparing for six more hours for the next day's opponent when back in the hotel room.
While Anand pointed out that the Indian youngsters played a healthy mix of chess — never ignoring classical chess events for the more excitable rapid and blitz variants or the new and shiny Freestyle Chess variant — all four variants (classical, rapid, blitz and freestyle) demanded a completely different 'state of mind' from players.
'When playing rapid and blitz events, it's a slightly different state of mind because you're playing multiple games a day (at rapid and blitz tournaments it's common for players to play four or more games in a single day since games are much shorter than classical events). So in the faster events, you need to be able to play more openings just on the fly. But for classical you need to get quite deep into what you're going to do because it's only one game a day. So rest is important between events. It also allows you to think about what kind of situations you're going to face,' Anand added.
India's young gunslingers on the battlefield of 64 squares are known to follow Anand's words like it's gospel. This just might be his most important advice to date.
