The Candidates Tournament win gave five-time champion Viswanathan Anand the opportunity of another crack at the World Chess Championship, but for that, Anand, the challenger, will have to overcome the man who snatched the crown from him last year in Chennai – Magnus Carlsen, the reigning champion.
It has to be admitted that the 22-year-old Norwegian, who won his first world crown beating Anand, is the favourite against the experienced Indian. Carlsen didn’t allow last year’s championship match to go the distance, finishing it at 6.5 to 3.5 in Game 10 of the 12-game rubber.
That probably put Anand in two minds, whether he has enough left in him to go after the title once again or not. And the inspirational moment for the Indian arrived on the dinner table with Vladimir Kramnik, which spurred him on to play the Candidates and earn the right to challenge Carlsen.
“He [Kramnik] basically argued that there was no reason for me not to play [Candidates]. He jokingly said that at the very least, I should play as Khanty-Mansiysk was a beautiful city and I could go around it. Coming from a person who had been in the same position as I was then, and who could understand what I was thinking, it was easy for me to digest. That night he ended up convincing me to go [to Candidates],” Anand had said in April earlier this year in Chennai at an interaction organised by NIIT.
Coming to this title fight, Anand’s seventh since 2007, the Carlsen-Anand match-up also has a piece of history attached to it.
It’s only the second occasion in the last 24 years that two same players are vying for the world crown back-to-back. Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov were the last to do that in 1990.
And talking about the two players in the fray, while Carlsen is considered as ‘The Mozart of Chess’ by his fans, Anand knows what it takes to win the world title – having bagged it five times already.
FIDE President, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, had also invited India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the opening ceremony on November 7. And the newly-elected PM did send his wishes to Anand via this tweet: “Good Luck Vishy! Conveying my best wishes to our pride, Viswanathan Anand for the World Chess Championship in Sochi,” Modi tweeted from his official handle.
Here’s all you want to know about the championship fight:
Date: November 8 to 27
Venue: Olympic Media Center in Sochi, Russia
Format: 12 games, followed by tie-break games if needed.
Points System: First player to reach 6.5 points is declared the winner. One point awarded for a win, half point to each player for a draw, no point for a defeat.
Schedule (all matches begin 4:30 pm IST):
November 8 : Game 1
November 9: Game 2
November 10: Rest Day
November 11: Game 3
November 12: Game 4
November 13: Rest Day
November 14: Game 5
November 15: Game 6
November 16: Rest Day
November 17: Game 7
November 18: Game 8
November 19: Rest Day
November 20: Game 9
November 21: Game 10
November 22: Rest Day
November 23: Game 11
November 24: Rest Day
November 25: Game 12
November 26: Rest Day
November 27: Tie-break Games
