Aloha Vishy! The World Chess Champion visits Hawaii (Part 2)
Report by Beau Mueller
Waikiki was recently blessed to count among its visitors the World Chess Champion,
Viswanathan Anand, his wife Aruna, and their sixteen-month-old son, Akhil. Lucky
for me, I had the honor and privilege of conducting an interview with the World
Champion at this extremely idyllic hotel. In our interview, we discussed many
things, including his impressions of Hawai'i, a visit to a local scholastic
tournament, his interest in astronomy and even the recent Pussy Riot incident.
Part one was published here recently, we move on to part two...
Beau Mueller: Yesterday, you visited a local
scholastic tournament. How was that?
Vishy Anand: It was good fun. I mean it brought some memories
back. I’ve gone to school tournaments myself. You understand the rush – the
parents are sitting anxiously, the ones who are finished are restless and running
around, the ones that are still playing are sitting and concentrating, and so
on. It was nice. Also, I get to see this fairly often nowadays because I am
myself promoting chess in schools in India, so we have competitions like this
reasonably often. So I get to see similar things.

A very excited crowd greets the Champ, who went on to treat attendees...

...to a bit of motivation and inspiration from a World Champion

Vishy handed out many trophies and medals – this one to Tristan Kaonohi,
one of
Hawaii’s strongest scholastic players

With Likeke Aipa, winner of the K-12 tournament, and Shari Tapper from the
Halekulani

With Hawaii Chess Federation (HCF) President Randy Prothero and Guy P. Ontai,
Scholastic Director
Peter
Shaindlin, COO of the Halekulani Hotel Corporation, also gave an inspired
speech. Peter was one of the driving forces in getting Vishy and his family
to Hawai'i, and Vishy had nothing but good things to say about him.
B.M.: How does the scholastic chess scene here compare
with India’s or other places you have lived or visited?
V.A.: I thought the quality yesterday in the room was pretty decent.
I don’t know the numbers. Obviously, India is a much bigger place, so the program
I have with this company, NIIT, is about one and a half million students, spread
out over 16,000 schools. We’ve been making quite some progress. We started it
about ten years ago. I would say we’ve hit some pretty key milestones there.
But yesterday, it seemed like a good sign. It looks like people here are pretty
passionate and excited about it.
Do you have any specific recommendations on how to grow scholastic chess
(and chess in general) in relatively small and isolated communities such as
Hawai'i?
I find that chess in schools is pretty much a snowball thing – if there are
a few people playing, others will become interested. The biggest thing to overcome
is: a) having people find out that a game like chess exists, and b) getting
them over the initial bit of learning how to play. Once they know the rules
and they know where to play – and as long it’s not a lot of hassle to
get to where you have to play – then it pretty much takes over by itself.
This is what we found in India as well – you put it in a few schools and eventually
momentum picks up. I would guess it’s the same here.
I don’t think isolation is a big issue any more, because you have the ability
to communicate online, even if you are one of five people on an island these
days. It’s not what it was thirty years ago, when you had to wait five years
to maybe make your first trip somewhere else, where you could maybe go to a
club, inquire and so on. Now, all that has changed a lot – you can just
play on some server. I don’t see isolation as a handicap anymore, I don't see
geographic isolation as a handicap.

NM Reynolds Takata, one of Hawaii’s most active and dedicated coaches

Dylan Marn, from the very strong Kamehameha team
If you had only a minute or two to spend with a talented junior player
and had to give them only one piece of advice, what would that be?
I would … well, in fact a lot of the questions I get asked about this are simply
about, “How do I learn?”, “How do I get as strong as you?”, and things like
that. I think it all comes down to the question of how do you absorb all of
this information? I would say … just practice. Practice often. Even if you are
only playing blitz. I mean it’s very difficult to absorb information whilst
reading it from a book. Unless you’ve played it out once or twice, the concepts
don’t fall in to place in your head. So, just play, and (even if it’s blitz)
it’s excellent. Just play a lot of blitz and you’ll get better.
Speaking of kids playing chess, are you planning to groom Akhil to be
a chess player?
Well, at some point I will see if he is interested. I mean, I definitely expect
at some point to put a board in front of him and see how he reacts. Beyond that,
I don’t know. I don’t want to push him a lot in chess because, well, he’d be
compared constantly to me, and it might be a bit of a nuisance for him. I would
rather that he knows how to play chess and, whatever catches his fancy, we’ll
take it from there.
I would personally be very interested to hear how you juggle fatherhood,
travel and all that it entails in being World Champ. Even as a chess-addicted
amateur, I find balance to be difficult.
Yeah, that’s very true. When I’m in India I try to spend as much time with
him as possible. And then, I simply have my training and my playing schedule.
So you just make sure that every day at least some time spent playing with your
son. You can always find time to do that. Especially now that it’s the most
fascinating part – they’re changing, they’re growing, they’re learning new and
interesting things. So, that’s interesting. Otherwise, it’s just a career like
before. You know you’ll have to block a certain amount of time for trainings
and things, but that would be the case no matter what I did. It’s not unique
to chess alone. If I was a doctor I’d have my patients, if I worked in a company
I’d have to go to the offices. It’s not particularly different for anybody else.

The author/interviewer with his son, Finn, meeting Vishy at the tournament
In your view, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a father?
I think just watching when they do something similar to you, and laughing at
that. Like once we caught Akhil just standing like this, with his hands clasped
behind his back. I like to do that a lot. It’s very funny to see him do that.
(Everyone laughs.)
(My wife asks): Did your father do that too?
My father also likes to do this. Yeah. (More laughs.)
Now onto something topical that I’m sure the chess world is eager to
get your opinion on: what are your thoughts on the recent Pussy Riot incident,
where Kasparov was detained and beaten?
Well, obviously I was quite concerned for his health. I can’t make out everything
that happened, but it seems to me that the police over-reacted. It’s very difficult
to make out anything and, to be honest, I haven’t been spending a lot of time
looking at the videos.
And Garry’s political activities in general?
That I don’t pay so much attention to. It’s not like something new has happened.
He’s been on a fairly predictable path for about eight or nine years, so I can’t
say I’ve really noticed anything new happen.
What about you, do you have any political aspirations?
(Laughs.) Nope. Zilch.

“Vishy the King” – King of the 64 squares, but no future in politics
Last question: If you were forced to retire and never play chess again,
how do you think you would spend your time?
That would be a blow because… Well, I think the point is to retire from chess
when you feel you’ve had enough, not to be forced to do it. That’s quite a different
situation, of course. But assuming that it goes the normal way, and there comes
the point where I feel I’ve had enough, then I’m sure I’d find other things
to do. I’d pursue my interests. You know, it’d not be that I necessarily do
something for a living – I’d just pursue my interests. I’d keep doing
something with chess, you know, like try and promote chess in schools and things
like that. But beyond that… I mean, you’re basically asking me if I stopped
tomorrow. That I don’t know.
Links
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About the Author/Interviewer
Beau Mueller recently returned home to Hawaii last year after spending
two years in rural Japan as an English teacher on the Japanese government-sponsored
JET Programme. An active (but average) tournament chess player, he is
also a second dan in shogi, and while in Japan maintained a popular
shogi blog.
Beau is also a father to an insane twenty-one month old, an active entrepreneur,
a competitive bodyboarder (not bodybuilder!), an MBA student, and the
Technology Chairman of the Hawaii
Chess Federation.
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