When Viswanathan Anand’s dominance made Magnus Carlsen realise he was ‘delusional’ about his game

Former world champion Magnus Carlsen has heaped massive praise on former world champion and current FIDE Deputy President Viswanathan Anand. This comes over a month after Carlsen had criticised Anand over the ‘jeansgate’ controversy during the World Rapid and Blitz Championships 2024 in New York.

Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Magnus Carlsen recalled an intense training camp with Vishy Anand in 2008, during which he was left in awe of the five-time world champion’s abilities.

Carlsen recalls interesting anecdote involving Anand

At that time, Anand was preparing for his World Championship title match against Russia’s Vladimir Kramnik, and Carlsen was invited to train with him in Spain.

The Norwegian admitted that Anand’s dominance in their training games made him realise that he had been “delusional” about his own strength. He described how Anand’s approach to the training camp in Madrid was on a completely different level. Carlsen said that the 2008 training camp turned out to be a reality check for him.

“I’ve been very fortunate to study with Garry Kasparov and (Viswanathan) Anand, who was a world champion before me. It’s only when you study with them, when you talk to them, that you understand how good they really are and how much they grasp the game. For instance, with Anand, I had a training session in 2008,” Carlsen recalled.

“We had both played a tournament where I had done decently, while he had kind of switched on toward the end. But as soon as that training camp started, he was so focused. We played a bunch of training games, and from being this guy who seemed completely disinterested in that tournament, suddenly, he was crushing me. He had a massive plus score in our games. It felt like everything we analysed, he just had a much deeper understanding of the game. He was fast tactically and everything. And it made me appreciate like how good he actually was.”

“At that point, I had a year of more or less constant rise. I was winning tournaments. Every time I lost a game, I believed I could strike back immediately. But I realised then that I was just delusional. I thought I was a lot better than I actually was. That was probably why I was having such good results - because of my confidence. But having a reality check, I think, helped me later to actually understand the game better,” Carlsen admitted.

Anand went on to defeat Kramnik in the 2008 World Chess Championship, further cementing his legacy as one of the greatest players in chess history. Meanwhile, Carlsen, who learned valuable lessons from that training camp, became the world champion in 2013 by defeating Anand.