Viswanathan Anand said he is not too concerned about the World Championship match against Russian Grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik.
NEW DELHI: Viswanathan Anand on Friday said he is not too concerned about the World Championship match against Russian Grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik and is only focusing on season-opening tournaments like Linares and Corus Chess Championships next year.
"It is a big challenge and I will have to train hard but right now I am only focusing on the first three months. I will decide on the preparations for the match only after that. But it is going to be close... we have played over 75 matches together," Anand, who was here to felicitate the winners of NIIT's Mind Champions challenge, said.
Anand and Kramnik will square off for the world title next October in a 12-game world championship match from October 11-30 at Bonn, Germany.
The match will have a prize fund of euro 1.5 million (nearly $2.2 million), to be shared equally by the two players.
In September, Anand won the world championship in Mexico City while Kramnik had finished second in the double round-robin event.
Impressed with the current crop of chess players in the country, Anand said players like K Sasikiran and P Harikrishna were exciting prospects.
"These guys have done well and have shown a lot of promise," he said.
Anand met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this morning and said he discussed promotion of sports, especially chess, among school kids with him.
"We discussed a lot of things, including how sports can be promoted at schools to identify young prodigies," he said.
Although he advocated the introduction of chess in all the schools of the country, Anand also warned the youngsters against putting themselves under too much pressure.
"It is very dangerous to put yourself under pressure especially at a young age. It never helps you. I mean when I decided to give up college, I was already world number five."
"But I don't think any young kid should put his career at stake for chess or any other sport. At the end of the day, you need something to fall back upon if you don't succed," Anand said.
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