World chess champion Vishwanathan Anand made a special appearance at the 36th National Women’s Premier Chess championship on Tuesday much to the delight of the players. A very relaxed Anand spent some time observing the participants play.
Anand had a great word of praise for the Indian junior players and singled out Grandmaster Abhijit Gupta, IM SP Sethuraman and Soumya Swaminathan for special mention. Anand, who briefly interacted with the media later, said that he would try and get a hat-trick of the re-unified world championship crowns.
“I would be playing in Corus (at Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands) from January 2010 and subsequently prepare for the World Championship, which I want to retain. You can’t say that there is a dearth of talent in India, we have many youngsters such as Abhijit, Sethuraman and Soumya playing pretty well,” he remarked.
Anand will clash with Vaselin Topalov in the World Championship in April in Sofia in Bulgaria from April 5 to 25. Asked if playing in Sofia would be a disadvantage, Anand replied in the negative. “I would be focussing on the 64 squares of the chess board and playing the game.” He didn’t feel it would be disturbing to play the world championship in Topalov’s backyard.
