Vishy 'The Lightning Kid' Anand wants his Rapid kingdom back again

Viswanathan Anand was first noticed by his mentor, India’s first IM Manuel Aaron, at the blitz games at Tal Club in Chennai where the speed with which he played earned him the sobriquet of ‘Lightning Kid’.

“We used to have five-minute games there and the loser would have to vacate his seat. Anand would win all the games and sit through the night. The speed with which he used to win earned him the title ‘Lightning kid’,” Aaron told The New Indian Express in an interview last year.

That Lightning Kid has morphed into a five-time world champion and a legend of the game. But now he wants his Rapid kingdom back.

In what can be regarded  as a sort of homecoming for him, Viswanathan Anand will play the World Rapid and Blitz Championships in Dubai from June 15 to 21. It is a star-studded line-up – Magnus Carlsen, Levon Aronian, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura and more are all going to be there.

Anand definitely wants the title back but he will also want to try and get one over Carlsen – any win over the current world champion give the Indian GM a big mental push.

The one question that everyone wants an answer to: where is the world championship going to happen?

Well, obviously once the April deadline passed, as far as I can understand, they have just left it open. People still seem to be looking and they are still trying to organize the match so I am just waiting to see if we get a date and venue soon.

Given the kind of pressure you had when you played in Chennai last time round, is home advantage something you look forward to?

I wouldn’t blame that on Chennai. I mean the point is – i would say that playing at home has the impact of magnifying whatever you are going through. If you are going through a good time, it will magnify that and well, if it is going badly, it will magnify that as well. But I don’t think I suffered because of that – I had more problems on the chess board. Obviously, I hope to avoid that this time. At the moment, I understand, they were looking for something in Norway, lets see if that materializes.

The World Rapid and Blitz Championships are just around the corner and you were once thought to be the best rapid/blitz player in the world. What are your thoughts going into this event?

It’s kind of strange that for many, many years Rapid tournaments kind of vanished. Till 2008, I would go for the Amber tournament in March and Minds and Corsica at the end of the year. Then Minds stopped in 2009, Amber stopped two years later and now I am surprised when I turn up at a Rapid event because I felt for a while, I was only playing the longer format. So I was excited in that sense. For me, it was a pity that I ended up missing quite a few World Rapid and Blitzes. 2012, I quite clearly was very keen to play but it clashed with my son’s birthday. So I was happy to play this time but then again I was surprised by the field, everyone is turning up .

Does the approach for rapid/blitz defer from classical chess in a big way?

You have to look at it a bit differently because in classical chess you can indulge yourself and spend 40 minutes on a position or something and get really deep into it. That is absent here. But for the rest it is quite similar to a classical game… I mean you will not do these 40 minute things often. So essentially, we are taking one or two moments out of the game. Blitz is a different story though – it is a whole different format.

You have the license to go crazy in Blitz?

In a sense, but I think that is too simplistic. Even in blitz, people are quite good. Many of the games will make sense, I mean they won’t be accurate. It’s not as people say.. ‘it’s a random thing… it’s a joke.’ But that is not true. So each will be different. I mean there is something called rapid skill and blitz skill but still your head is screwed on tight and you either play a good game or not. At Zurich, I didn’t have a very good time (Anand finished last) but last year, I had quite a few good results. So you basically you hope to play good chess.

Carlsen vs Anand – how different is it going to be this time round?

It will be a different match anyway. I don’t think either of us will play in the same way. And a different match is different match by definition. I will try and learn from the things that went wrong and I have many impressions of that which I will use when I train. I keep saying it very often, that if I had been dropped into the match that would have been one thing but qualifying for the match gave me a huge morale boost, you feel positive also, good results are something you can feed off. But.. it goes without saying that we have to do different things… especially the loser.

Kramnik says it is going to be different. According to the Russian GM, you basically froze last time round…

The important thing is to stay positive and to hold that thought during the match. I will give it my best shot. It is, to not put it delicately, an unexpected second chance and i definitely want to make use of that. Having said that, the Rapids come first. I don’t even know when the World Championship match is going to happen – so we are literally waiting for details on that front.