Interesting video

Nikos pointed me towards this video on opening preparation by Anand. Not much new for me in it, but I assume most of you will find it absolutely fascinating.

 

32 thoughts on “Interesting video”

  1. I found the most interesting part when he said that chesssplayers became lazy and start to see chesss books without using the board ( also i think i read something similar from Judit Polgar). I remebered that Shirov was interview at home and when the photographer wants to take a photo with Shirov at the board he didn’t have one!!
    It’s worth the effort try to read chess books without board?? Or is something that comes naturally?
    Of course, the part of preparing for the world championship are also worth .

  2. @tonifa
    Some GMs I know will not believe that some chess players use a board! I use one personally. Especially for exercises. I like to keep chess 3D. It is not a requirement either way. But it is useful to be able to understand the solution to an exercise without having to play it out on the board, as we had a few days ago here on the blog.

  3. “Not much new for me in it, but I assume most of you will find it absolutely fascinating.”

    Just a curiosity…why what is not new for you should be fascinating for us?

  4. I guess that this is because the things Anand said are fascinating, but few people know them! For example, the fact that his database is about 20 million games is indeed amazing! I’d really want to have such a big database of quality games. I guess that some statistical research based on this would really be fascinating. I have in mind for example the “old Kaufman” research for material values where his sample was only about 300.000 quality games if i recall corectly.

  5. Jacob was right – there’s not much new information in there for professional chess players (many of whom have experienced a lot of what Anand described in the video) but it was quite nice to hear it laid out in such an organized and well-spoken fashion. I listened intently to the whole clip.

    Thanks, Jacob!

  6. It is very nice video – it is really hard (at least to me) to watch Anand’s lecture. In a comparison Kasparov’s lectures are much easier to find (and watch). However current World Champion has summed up a bunch of concepts in a nice way. I liked it! Especially the role of emotions and approach to the game.

    As to the amount of databases: nowadays it is possible to have even 500 million games database (yes, you read it write – five hundred million games), but it would be a bit hard to analyse all of these games 😉 :). Just to mention: 40 years ago you could have a database (even if it was paper not electronic one) that contains no more than 2-3 thousand of games and now the ratio is about 200.000x more! Impressive progress, isn’t it? 🙂

  7. Nikos Ntirlis :
    I guess that this is because the things Anand said are fascinating, but few people know them! For example, the fact that his database is about 20 million games is indeed amazing! I’d really want to have such a big database of quality games. I guess that some statistical research based on this would really be fascinating. I have in mind for example the “old Kaufman” research for material values where his sample was only about 300.000 quality games if i recall corectly.

    Anand doesn’t say that the database only consists of quality games. Of course it depends what you mean with quality but for Anand surely quality must be at least serious games played by top 100 players. If we assume 1 such player plays averagely 100 serious games per year then you have 10k games/ year in total. To achieve 20M games you need to collect all such games over 2000 years so not possible.
    Of course I don’t have access to Anands personal database but I assume the database is built up with megadatabase, correspondence database, enginegames database (see my blog for more info), web portal databases (playchess, icc, …) Specially these web portal databases have an enormous amount of games but 99,99% of these games are played on blitztimecontrols so have a very limited value.

  8. @garryk
    Because many of the readers here have not had this kind of conversations with the best players and their trainers, but as a chess journalist at some top events, I have.

  9. What I appreciated most about this lecture is that it was intended for a very general audience, so that I can recommend it to friends of mine who are not serious chess players for them to get a sense of what high-level chess is like these days.

  10. Jacob Aagaard :
    @brabo
    He has a great amount of computer games no doubt. He is close friends with Friedel from ChessBase.

    Mark Uniacke from Hiarcs also claimed on his website that they have been supporting Anand in his recent worldchampionshipmatches. It is clear that Anand got access to large databases of pure enginegames. However recently I’ve been working with such databases and my feeling is that it adds very little to the other databases. Also something what is claimed on Openingmaster. You will seldom find interesting novelties in those enginegames. A friend told me the strength of such database mainly lays in evaluating the existing theory as games are played out without human mistakes.

  11. I remember that the photograph issue was with anand himself ( chessbase news) he hasn’t a board at home, a reporter trying to play with him . its seems interesting that pros recommend use the board yusupov also recommend 2 boards !! and i think that’s right, analyzing the diagram is easy but its not the same as thinking in front a real board

  12. Very interesting! I especially liked Anand’s thoughts on memorisation of home preparation, taking risks, and fear of losing control.

  13. Also worth is what Anand said about the rook ending he lost against Leko, it shows me that know is only part of the job, you need to understand deeply. That explains that tip of Aagaard about knowing by heart the 222 basic positions from Dvorestky’s EGM.

  14. @tonifa
    Absolutelly! There are difference between knowledge, practice and having the ability to play some positions without any thinking! It reminds me the term “intuition” when you are repeating some (simple) positions many times… until you cannot go wrong (even if you want). I found out on my own that many simple R-endings give me problems when I do not repeat them at least once a month! I do not even reveal about other type of endgames nor the more difficult ones!

    Jacob Aagaard:
    What about the book “Pump up Your Rating”? Could you reveal us what is the present state of this book? Have the specific date of publishing already been set? What about an excerpt?

  15. @Mario
    Part of the reason why Anand does not have a board at his house is that he does not work too seriously on chess on his own from what I have heard. He likes to work with others; which is when the board is located.

    But we should also remember that GMs are on different places in their journey than the target audience of Artur’s books!

  16. Gilchrist is a Legend

    @Jacob Aagaard
    Playing the French shall be a very large book? This I did not expect, I expected around 300 pages like the GM Guides. Or is this an exception and a 600 page GM Guide? I cannot complain about that, but I suppose either the editing process decided that more material was necessary , or there must be a large amount of repertoire choices..

  17. Gilchrist is a Legend

    @Jacob Aagaard
    That is much more than I imagined. I think few weeks ago, 75% was edited. But then with 500 pages, that leaves 125 pages left, so I suppose that was why it is October now. It seems as if the French books have all expanded unexpectedly, but I suppose that is what happens with such an interesting opening. This new development sounds like the book shall be excellent, looking forward to it.

  18. Gilchrist is a Legend

    I guess that “complete books” means that it shall be one book instead of split into two volumes. And it has exercises…

  19. Gilchrist is a Legend

    @Jacob Aagaard
    This exercises concept is probably one of the best additions of the recent books. Kotronias wrote about how his book could be a middlegame book as well as opening, but the exercises also supplement the concept of Playing the French, which I think may have been said, was to focus more on explanations. I am not an expert on the French at all, but even being around 2300 ELO I feel like an explanatory prose can help me improve much in this opening.

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