World Chess Championship: Have to try harder with white, admits Anand

Despite being down 4-5 with just three more games to go, Viswanathan Anand today said he was fine with an easy draw in the ninth game and insisted that he still has a chance of posting a win in the World Chess Championship match. “You have to just play the positions you get, the situations you get. I can count, I know the score but I think I still have some chances,” Anand said at the post-match conference after the ninth game ended in a quick draw. [caption id=“attachment_1813993” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Despite being down 4-5 with just three more games to go, Viswanathan Anand today said he was fine with an easy draw in the ninth game. Getty Images[/caption] Asked about the level of confidence at this point, the five-time world champion said, “Quite reasonable. I just have to try harder with white,” Anand said, pointing to his remaining two white games in the last three rounds. “A lot of this (theory) is known, this idea is often met with Bishop move, but I didn’t really expect it. But when it happened there is not really much that black can do.” Anand refused to draw comparisons to his match in Chennai: “I am going to focus on this match, I don’t sit and think about Chennai a lot, even though we are off early (today) there is a game going to be played tomorrow, so I will go and focus on that now,” he said. Meanwhile, calling it a pretty even match so far, world champion Magnus Carlsen said nerves will play a part in the remaining games. Carlsen agreed that this was a much tougher match than he played against Anand in Chennai a year back: “Going in to the last games when the score is pretty even, its always going to be tough, it’s a pretty even match so far. In Chennai, I was up three at this point. This is much tougher,” Carlsen said. PTI