Anand, the king of Advanced Chess

By Arvind Aaron

LEON, JUNE 6. Barring one slide in the opening game against Judit Polgar it was a smooth well-planned victory for Viswanathan Anand, the king of Advanced Chess.

Anand who received the memento of a Lion for winning the tournament in the closing ceremony from Mr. Enrique Gil, Consul of Sports, of the Regional Government on Monday afternoon, is winning his first tournament in four months. All the participants and about a hundred people attended this ceremony held in a restaurant.

Looking at his games, except for that first game which he said he ``warmed up'' there was little to improve in any of his games which had very high quality.

Reacting to his victory, Anand said, ``I was able to wake up much more pleasantly this morning.'' Asked if this victory would help him and his confidence in the next events, Anand replied, ``No, in fact it is more in contrast as I have to prepare against the computer as an opponent in my next two events at Frankfurt and Dortmund.''

Anand hoped that the 10 days of rest will help him solve the problem of being over-reliant on the computer for critical moves. The 50,000 dollar four day tournament concluded this evening with the distribution of prizes.

Insiders say that two new players, Vladimir Kramnik and Peter Leko may be inducted at the expense of Miguel Illescas and Judit Polgar with Anand and Shirov being retained for the same format next year.

Trainer GM Elizbar Ubilava said Anand played very well and now they had to distance the computer. ``He (the computer) is even a rival in Frankfurt and Dortmund.''

Anand who celebrated the victory by calling his parents currently holidaying in the United States said his second Ubilava had been giving many last minute tips of which lines not to play. ``On most of the occasions it has been working well so far,'' said Anand.

Shirov was very disappointed and he looked so even half-way through the second game as the result was clear. Later in the press conference he said Leon is a better place to lose than Linares. His second Valery Salov has been very critical on some chess personalities particularly Kasparov.

Software guru Frederic Friedel who edits a computer chess magazine and is a reliable consultant for both Kasparov and Anand on these matters said it is a good moment for Mark Uniacke, the British programmer who is behind Hiarcs. Anand used Hiarcs7.32 version with tremendous success. ``It appears to me that it is a good programme,'' GM Valery Salov said at the commentary room during Saturday's second semi-final match. The speciality is it finds the difficult moves first and doesn't change the evaluation as rapidly as other programmes. Once it calculates a variation it remembers deleted or overwritten analysis until it is switched off and top players find this facility useful.

If Hiarcs was the successful programme, Junior was the most frequently tried programme followed by Fritz. Nimzo was the only programme none of the players tried switching on event to have a glance.

On the hardware front, there was one crash in Shirov's computer while playing Illescas when the video memory locked up the display and the 1,000 MHz computer had to restarted. Mr Lutz Nebe, the programmer from Chess Base said next year probably the players will use Chess Base 8.0 version which is in for commercial release soon.

Asked if there will be a moment where players will use the computer like a calculator and get equal results in the future with games leading to draws, Mr Nebe said a double in processor power will give about 30 Elo increase in playing strength of the software programme. Including that increase still the programme will be atleast a 100 Elo below players like Anand and Shirov.

``All four players were good in computer usage. Anand created a database, clicked it as a reference database and did the same things as last year. Judit used the tree, and Shirov used the openings key and Illescas was also pretty good.''

``Anand used Hiarcs because it remembers deleted lines and stores them in memory,'' Mr. Nebe said.

Fritz has the same facility on the standalone platform but not in the Chess Base interface, Mr Nebe said. ``I enjoyed the event more because there was more excitement and importantly all the four players were almost on par on computer usage,'' Mr. Nebe concluded.

The Chairman of the FIDE World Players Council Valery Salov gave a peculiar press conference this morning where he asked the press to be open to criticism on all personalities particularly Kasparov. He called for private initiative in the world of chess without running or using the name `world championship'. Salov said speaking for over an hour in Spanish that Kasparov has destroyed enough and referred him as ``ex-world champion''. He labelled certain publications as being pro-Kasparov and dominant in the chess world. He repeated one complaint which Karpov had been making for the last few years, which is, Kasparov decides the field and the format of major tournaments. He said his committee is made up of several grandmasters who are afraid to sign or lend their names fearing a Kasparov backlash.

On the questions of `dirty money' which the FIDE President has been pumping into the chess world in FIDE Championships, he said unless we have any proof to the contrary we have to assume that it is good money.

Salov refused to be quoted without permission and has demanded a correction from a local newspaper here.

On the FIDE Commerce meeting which was held late last month at Lausanne, he told The Hindu that what was presented was only the draft and not the last paper. A lot of it is being corrected and said that journalists need not pay attention to it as it is only a frame yet.

Salov had earlier criticised the Spanish Chess Federation for not doing anything to help Shirov in his battle for a match against Kasparov. Mr Xavier Ochoa, the President of the Spanish Chess Federation in his reply has expressed his inability to use his offices to aid or help a parallel match involving Kasparov against FIDE.

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