Viswanathan Anand: World champ runs, cycles and swims to castle and check World No 1

Undisclosed location. This is how the chess world describes the place of training of both defending champion Viswanathan Anand and challenger Magnus Carlsen. There is a certain degree of secrecy about the location, not because the place has anything to do with what would appear on the board when the two players meet in Chennai from November 9 over 12 games in the World championship, but the entire team would be present there preparing for the duel.

However, the cat is out of the bag at least with regard to Anand’s location of training, though the World champion himself may not be too concerned about his whereabouts getting leaked towards the end of his practice.

In an article published in Bad Sodener Zeitung, Eric van Reem describes what Anand has been doing in the last two months in Germany.

It talks about Anand’s decision to buy an apartment in Bad Soden 10 years ago. “His close friend and neighbour Hans-Walter Schmitt, organiser of the famous Chess Classic Tournaments in Frankfurt and Mainz, advised him to come to Bad Soden. The town is just a few miles away from Frankfurt and its international airport.”

What is important is not the airport or Frankfurt, but what he planned to do for his preparation.
“Anand has been pretty active as well,” says the Bad Sodener Zeitung. “He bought a season ticket for the swimming pool in Bad Soden and swam about 1000 metres per day. He would also run 10km every day and has also been spotted on a bicycle in the beautiful hills around Bad Soden. He lost about six kilos this summer. Most of the time, though, Anand prepared for the match in the Chess Tigers Training Centre with his seconds.”

The article did not say anything about who his seconds are probably because the author and the newspaper had no information about them. For the time being, let us stick to the most significant part of the article that discussed Anand’s method of training for the Carlsen match. It is clear that the World champion was as particular about his team of seconds as the kind of physical training he needed to go along with his chess preparation, combining both of them in his choice location.

The paper has quoted Anand on his daily routine in Bad Soden. The World champion crisply describes what he does in the German town, though there is more to it than what the words mean. “It first creates a complete picture of the enemy. One wonders what one wants to achieve, in what area you are looking for the battle and where the problems lie. And then, of course, fitness exercises, running, swimming. It works all day,” he said.

It is not unusual for World champions to undergo rigorous physical training before a big match. History records Alexander Alekhine shocked Jose Raul Capablanca in the 1927 World championship with a tough fitness regimen. Alekhine gave up drinking and smoking, and underwent a training programme that stood him in good stead in a 34-game trial. His victory was mostly credited to his better physical shape and ability to last the marathon.

In the last Candidates tournament too, Vladimir Kramnik almost pulled it off against Magnus Carlsen, though the Russian lost in the end mainly because he went for something new over the board in a desperate measure. Kramnik, 37, was in great shape for the match though Carlsen was 15 years younger.

In India, physical training to accompany chess preparation was in a primitive state until recently. There are many jokes about physical training in chess camps. Most of them are from the pre-Viswanathan Anand days and representatives of the new generation vouch they were true. Like a player walking with a brief case in hand when he was attending an NIS camp in Bangalore before India went to participate in an Olympiad.

Whether true or not, it is an accepted fact that Indian chess players in general did not take physical training seriously before the 1990s. Compare those players with the two protagonists of the upcoming match for the world title, World No 1 Magnus Carlsen and world champion Viswanathan Anand, both fitness freaks in their own ways.

Compare this with the kind of primitive training camps that India had in the 1980s and before. “We had a 15-day camp at NIS centres every year,” says V Saravanan, an International Master. “But there was hardly any trainer allotted to us. We did our chess training with one of the chess coaches from Russia, but he told us the physical training part was not his job.”

Saravanan agrees the facilities available in those camps were indeed good, but most of the players did not know the significance of this kind of training in chess. The Chennai-based International Master picks Krishnan Sasikiran as the best example for getting through the fitness regimen in the 1990s.

But the situation is totally different now. “If you take the new generation kids, you will immediately realise that they pay a lot of attention to their fitness training,” says Saravanan. “Parimarjan Negi was supremely fit at the age of 15 and most of the young talents now are fit when they are in their teens.”

Anand’s Indian second Surya Sekhar Ganguly is a fitness freak and a black belt in karate; Sandipan Chanda, another Grandmaster from Kolkata and the one who is reportedly in the Anand camp, has been practising yoga for the last 10 years. All these confirm the changing perception that to play good chess, you also need to have a sound physique.

The Carlsen camp could be in for a surprise in Chennai when they come face to face with an Anand, looking 10 years younger after his Bad Soden marathon.