(VISHWANATHAN
ANAND)
38, WORLD CHESS CHAMPION
 Fame
won’t change you if your environment remains
unchanged. Even though I had my big breakthroughs
while still at school, my classmates had known me
from much before. So I felt quite normal with them.
My family also made sure that I stayed grounded.
You need to figure out who is on your side and who
is on your side for convenience. Everyone goes through
a lot of personal struggles in their rise to the
top. Competition is full of conceit and treachery.
Pick the right friends who you know will stick with
you through thick and thin.
Sometimes your biggest strength can also be your
weakness. But you have to stick to what works for
you. I’m known as the Speed King, but on occasions
haste has cost me dearly. But I never really considered
changing my style of playing, because I know that
is what I’m best at.
The key to maintaining one’s concentration
and patience is to have nothing else but the task
at hand on your mind.
Never have too much respect for your competition.
If you are only thinking about who you are up against
then you will end up being overawed. Just concentrate
on what you are doing and forget about what the
competition is trying to do.
Fear, when analysed, is a most irrational feeling.
Just stick to your guns and do what you think works
best and the results will take care of themselves.
Being physically fit helps you think better. I spend
an hour in the gym every day to stay healthy. It
helps me stay alert and gets my adrenaline pumping.
You need to shake off failure quickly. When I lose,
I am usually quite eager to play another game to
erase the memory of the loss. Soon after the loss,
I go for a long walk or hit the gym. I physically
exhaust myself so that I can get some sleep and
not continue to dwell on the loss. Failure is hard
to accept, and it upsets me when I lose, but experience
will teach you that it’s not your failures
that people remember, but how you recover from them.
Be aggressive from the start and don’t give
the competition a chance. It’s nice when you
have a long drawn out match where you do something
spectacular at the end and I do like pressure games.
But honestly, I like finishing off my opponents
quickly.
BACK
|
