From the buildup to the match so far, Chess fans are in for a fabulous fare with a youthful Carlsen, challenging the hegemony of Anand who has been holding the crown since 2007, having won it five times since 2000. Anand is 43, Carlsen 22, a situation almost similar to the great duels in the game, between Anand and Karpov, between Bobby Fisher and Boris Spassky.
Anand is probably, India's best-known sportsman after Sachin Tendulkar, even though chess is played in more countries than cricket. He is a Padma Vibhushan, the first Indian sportsman to be conferred that honor and is one of the richest too with brand endorsements running into crores of rupees. As NIIT brand ambassador, he is responsible for most kids contacting chess at an early age. Since 2002, the NIIT MindChampion' Academy has fostered 15,600 chess clubs. It covers 1.5 million students with video tutorials, instructional software, multi-lingual approach and online matches, teaching children not just chess strategies but the fundamentals of analysis and logical thinking. I had interacted with one of the kids my wife taught a few years back, the kid and his brother not only play chess exceptionally well, they are also shining in academic performance. As Anand himself says, "Chess forces players to think spatially and keep stepping back to look at the big picture. You have to plan strategy, think ahead, engage in abstract reasoning and, you need to work your way into your opponent's head. This is quite remarkable for Anand despite plonking a critical mass of his wealth in a vast suburb in Spain. After Bobby Fisher, Anand takes the credit for firing the imagination of millions of young people the world over to take up a game, originally invented by the Indians, but masterfully pivoted by the Russians.
Today, promising chess players have begun to emerge from China, Armenia, Norway and Israel etc. Anand's adversary, Magnus Carlsen is from Norway and is already the highest ranked player - the most basic being 2200 for an International Master. He has been a GrandMaster at the age of thirteen, the third youngest in history. In a televised demonstration of his abilities, Carlsen once played ten opponents simultaneously in speed chess - with his back turned to the boards. That is something even Anand attempted in a game which he termed as blitz. Playing at this level, both Carlsen and Anand will have to remember and instantly and automatically refer to thousands of games stored in memory. According to one researcher, a champion will have to remember 50,000 to 100,000 chunks of games and openings about the game. This is itself staggering and belies the magnificence of what a human brain is capable of remembering. It is probably more challenging than writing an equivalent of ten statistical tests of an Actuary examination - considered the world's toughest computational challenge.
The difficulty of remembering so many games and the repertoires of strategies to counter the openings and its precise unfolding is what takes a toll on the players. I have three apps on my Ipad which combine an equivalent of 20,000 games. I have never been able to beat the App because I do not have such long-term memory with instant recall. Even if my brain is not exactly filled with sawdust, the task of recalling a Chigorin's Defence or a Dutch defence and then playing stonewall variation or Flank openings requires a monumental memory. I read somewhere that the exact number of combinations and permutations from any one move in Chess Game can be as high as 10 raised to the power of 120, that is, 1 followed by 120 zeroes! Thats why I surmise after the smashing first match between Garry Kasparov and IBM Deep Blue (the supercomputer wired with algorithms on chess games) which Kasparov won, Deep Blue beat the former hollow second time onwards. Nobody since then had the temerity to take on a computer in a well-publicised match because this is one game where the human brain, arguably, has lost it to the mega memory machines that man invented. So a computer can beat a human brain because it is programmed to outplay and has the counter-intuitive arsenel in the form of powerful algorithms to navigate the variations of play available compared to just a lakh or so of chunks of information in a human brain. If you allow me to make a detour here, I must also say that the days of human dominance on some games like this are already numbered after that fateful day on May 11, 1997 when Deep Blue defeated the reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match. Today, games like checkers, Othello, poker, bridge, backgammon, scrabble and even Sudoku can by played by computers with algorithms that will overwhelm any human player, however dexterous and intuitive. The short answer to that is that the more iterative and complex a game is, lending itself to a playing mixture of memory of millions of legal moves and rational responses, the more easy it is for Artificial Intelligence experts to build a machine that trounces Man.
For the record, there are several books written about the inside stories of the memorable campaigns by the famed IBM team that prepared to defeat the greatest chess player of all time. But it took about 12 years, an equivalent of an exile in Ramayana to outclass a champion. Kasparov's fall came quite soon after that debacle and Anand became the new world chess champion in 2000, the first time. Unlike now, Anand also didn't declare his "seconds" for three championships. So it is understandable why Carlsen is reluctant to reveal the seconds. There is a rumor that Garry Kasparov himself may be plotting against Anand this time, helping out Carlsen. As it is, taking seconds is itself a reassuring step in the direction of winning. Anand has picked Sasikiran and two foreigners, usually, some of them must have been remarkable adversaries to Anand in some of the Linares tournaments. Carlsen, looks nervous and has the burden of beating Anand, who at forty-three looks more composed than ever because Anand has never played with an insecurity of losing. He always played with a passion for the game.
But this part of it, the sensationalism in the build-up to the games, and the posturing pre-and-post matches is what makes Chess a better package than watching two super-computers play with nothing embedded but silicon chips. Back then, Kasparov and Karpov used to psyche each other out with little help from Western media. Probably, the most sensational of all matches must have got played by both of them under the burdensome purview of Cold War, more between them than the US and Soviet Union. Boris Spassky, another Soviet great, was stunned by Bobby Fisher in 1972 and the latter became to Chess what Bruce Lee was to Karate - the most enigmatic player but obsessed with chess. According to the script for the movie "Searching for Bobby Fisher", Bobby Fisher was in awe of himself and the game. He designed a new chess clock, designed a new chess board game with eighty squares in it (usually it has sixty four), became anti-semitic and later on became a recluse till he became a nervous wreck. He was, however, brilliant and was renowned for being envisioned on the direction of the game within few moves.
Anand has no such qualms, he had led a balanced life, grounded by wife Aruna and parents, never lost his composure or became a boor in the game like a Kasparov. He wrote a book "My Best Games " which captures forty of his best chess games, maintains a hearty touch with India's leading sportspersons, almost like Sachin Tendulkar and puts in enormous efforts for any big match. Twelve hour days are a routine it seems in Anand's book and his team of seconds vouch for the same. Anand also tried to give back to the game with all these mentoring programs for kids. He has been an outlier that won respect from advesaries like Kramnick, Karpov, Kasparov and even Carlsen. He still takes those five deep breaths before every game and plays with a straight face without getting mean looks. This time, a lot of forces are aligning themselves together to thwart Anand's march into one more championship crown. There will be distractions, I know; another legend cricketer's swan song, elections in five states, etc. but let nothing take the credit away from one of India's Urban legends in Chess. He has brought the game back to India and has shown the world that with right training, focus and hardwork, rewards can come in Chess too. Carlsen will play hard and mask his tricks but whatever be the outcome, this should turn out to be a vodka-kick to chess fans. May the best player win.
