My guest in this week’s episode is a very special one, it’s none other than five-time World Champion Viswanathan Anand. Commonly known as Vishy Anand, he is one of the greatest and most popular champions in the history of our game and one of its most admired and respected ambassadors. 
Anand was the first ever Indian grandmaster, and look what happened in his wake, today there are 85 grandmasters in India, it’s truly unbelievable.

Although no one could blame him if he decided to rest on his laurels, Vishy Anand remains active as a player – and he is still ranked number 13 in the world (2743), which is frankly incredible - but in the past years he has also taken on new roles.
He is Deputy Vice-President of FIDE and he is a partner in the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy in Chennai, where the cream of the highly successful young Indian generation is training and, no doubt, many youngsters whose names we do not yet know.

Vishy Anand joins us from Leon, in Spain, where he is playing in the invitational group of the annual Magistral (together with Le Quang Liem, Faustino Oro and Spanish GM Jaime Santos), an international rapid and blitz tournament.

With a unique career like Anand’s, it’s impossible to do a career-spanning interview, that’s just not possible. With all due respect, he’s won so much, it’s frankly ridiculous.
He has been World Champion in all the formats that we have seen, he’s have won all the great traditional tournaments and many of them on multiple occasions, it’s an endless list, starting from when he became Junior World Champion and even earlier and continuing till this day.
Therefore I decided to focus on two particular events: to begin with the New Year’s tournament in Reggio Emilia (1991/92) which resulted in a sensational victory for Anand: In the first category 18 tournament in history he finished ahead of 9 former Soviets (during the tournament the USSR fell apart and was replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States), including top-favourites Garry Kasparov (who he defeated in the second round) and Anatoly Karpov.

Next, Anand spoke about one of his favourite tournaments, the luxurious Amber rapid and blindfold events, held in Monaco and on a few occasions in Nice and Roquebrune. Organized by the Association Max Euwe of IT billionaire and chess lover Joop van Oosterom from 1992 till 2011.
Anand played in 18 of the 20 editions and was the most successful participant with a percentage of 62,63%.
Five times he was the overall winner in the Amber tournament.

Enjoy this week's episode of the New In Chess Podcast! 0:00 – Intro

1:56 – Where does Vishy keep his countless trophies?

5:29 – Vishy recalls bursting onto the chess scene in the early 90’s, scoring victories over the world’s best

8:44 – Linnares, Tilburg and Reggio Emilia 1991

17:49 – Being initially underestimated by the rest of the chess elite

22:35 – Linnares 1992

26:16 – AD BREAK

26:48 – The Reggio Emilia tournaments

30:45 – Vishy’s experience of the first Amber chess tournament

40:00 – Joop van Oosterom, the billionaire sponsor of the Amber tournaments

42:30 – Why Kasparov didn’t play in the Amber tournaments

47:30 – Vishy describes finding a sort of refuge at the Amber tournaments

49:20 – AD BREAK

50:19 – “We have to talk about Lubo and John Nunn”

56:43 – Jeroen Piket

58:40 – Ivanchuk’s short-lived retirement

1:00:15 – Does Vishy see a future for blindfold chess?

1:03:15 – Vishy’s affinity for rapid chess

1:05:30 – Vishy’s memories of Reggio Emilia