Our scores were absolutely identical when he retired: Anand on Kramnik

Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand says there was nothing to separate between him and his one-time arch rival Vladimir Kramnik, who introduced a shock retirement in 2019.

Russia’ Kramnik, the primary unified world champion, had an intense rivalry with Anand for a few years. He misplaced to Anand within the 2008 World Championships.

“Out of the 20 odd years we have swapped the number 2-3 position. We were always very close to each other in terms of points, so close that when he retired our scores were absolutely identical even after more the 150 games,” Anand stated within the second episode of ‘The Finish Line’, conceptualised by Baseline Ventures.

Kramnik turned the primary undisputed world champion in 2006, holding each the FIDE and Classical titles, since Garry Kasparov break up from FIDE in 1993.”Well we joined the highest of the world chess roughly on the similar time, I joined two years forward of him. At that time I didn’t bear in mind it but, however afterward he instructed me that we had met three years in the past,” Anand stated about Kramnik, who defeated the legendary Garry Kasparov in 2000 to grow to be Classical World Chess champion.

“I played him once in 1989 which kind of slipped my mind but I met him again in 1992 and that year was his breakthrough moment,” stated the 50-year-old Anand, who held the world champion title between 2007 and 2012.

Asked about sure tips he wanted in the course of the last showdown towards Kramnik, Anand stated, “Well for the world championship the schedule is fairly luxurious, but that gives you some sort of a starting point. We used to play one white one black, then there is a rest day and it goes on. The idea is to take two games at a time.The real difficult moment comes after game 10, because after that he managed to pin point one weakness. It was all about making some logical improvisations, but we had done such good work and we had two white pieces.”So I managed to neutralize him pretty early. In reality the 11th recreation didn’t final very lengthy.”