Viswanathan Anand of India is the new, mostly undisputed, World Chess Champion, thanks to his stellar performance at the Mexico City tournament. The Chess Ninja has the details.
By all accounts Anand is a class act and a well-deserving champion. He played, and lost, a title match with Gary Kasparov in 1995. This steback did not long stop him from returning to top form, and he has ben a fixture in top level chess for more than twenty years. So congratulations to him!
If all goes according to plan, Anand will play a match with Kramnik (who officially lost his title by only finishing tied for second in this event) next year. Should be a great match. I'm rooting for Anand.
Okay. Back to my break.
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Ha, I bet he uses performance-enhancing drugs.
Actually, as I understand it based on various press accounts of the tournament, the players actually were drug tested during the event. It's not clear to me what they were testing for. Probably just No Doz. As Robin Williams once said about baseball, it's a slow goddamn game!
Tested for drugs? For playing CHESS?
What would be the giveaway -- bulging muscles on the arm with which one habitually moves chesspieces, perhaps even accidentally gripping a pawn so tightly that it cracks?
No-Doz is indeed a more likely possibility, but I haven't heard of caffeine being on any list of banned substances (well, not outside of Mormon circles, anyway).
~David D.G.
Never heard of beta blockers? Helps players to cope with stress. Long ago very popular among snooker-players.
I have something in common with Viswanathan Anand, as I am a former chess champion....in sixth grade.
Yes, Anand is awesome.
The bit about drug testing has been around for a while. If I recall correctly, FIDE and the IOC have been talking about rolling the the Chess Olympiads into the Olympic mix in some way, and the IOC insists that their full drug policy be adopted. Similar issues have apparently emerged at regional and national levels. If cafeine counts as an illegal stimulant, this could be the end of Chess as we know it.
Vishwanathan is great .. and salutes to him for his achievement !!
But its sad to note that his triumph was not much celebrated in India, as most of the people were living in the euphoria of the Twenty-20 Cricket World cup (which is an effort to shorten the game of Cricket), which India won.
I don't remember reading much in news about the coverage of his achievements and people recognizing the magnitude of his triumph.
~ An Indian.