Viswanathan Anand Quotes

Being the undisputed world champion is a relief. We instituted a unified chess title, I am the absolute world champion.

I wasn't expecting him to be a gracious, so fair enough. The winner can say anything when he wins... so I guess we will just have to swallow it for now.

You would have to sit at the board and sweat and feel the fear of defeat or the nearness of victory to understand what goes through a player's head … If you think it's that easy, switch off the computer and try and figure out a few moves on your own.

A [world title] match has that feeling much more strongly because it's the same guy doing it over and over and over … When you play a single person, it becomes narrower because you are so focused on each other. It is a lot more personal.

Anything unusual that you can produce has quadruple, quintuple the value, precisely because your opponent is likely to do the predictable stuff, which is on a computer.

To become a world chess champion.

I have what I think is an extremely Indian relationship with God....In Moscow before the tie breaker of the World Championship in May 2012, I again entreated God:Just stay on my side of the board.

When I first visited Moscow in the late 1980s, I was so intimidated. I thought I could be checkmated by every cabdriver.

Since the 1990s technology has taken some of the sheen off the Russian trainers and their methods.

When I started out, Indians did not have much interest in chess…Now India seems to spawn new chess academies every day.

What happens to you at the board begins to feel like it's happening to you in person.

I felt I had I worked hard enough and I felt confident I had done the right kind of work and the right amount of work. But when you talk of preparations, the measure of success is whether it works or not. In that area, I failed completely. I did not stay the course. When you hit the right spot, the sweet spot, it feels great and you feel the preparations have been ideal, but I never got there.

As a young kid sprouting a wispy moustache, I was sometimes dismissed by the Russians as an upstart. I have been referred to even as a “coffeehouse player”

One of the things I bring to my play is my Indian identity – my ability to shrug off a loss as destiny and hope for better tomorrow. I am often described as a “natural” or “intuitive player”.

I started at the age of six. My elder brother and sister were dabbling a bit, and then I went to my mother and pestered her to teach me as well.