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Earlier this year, Holger Hank reported on Vincent Keymer and his World Championship ambitions for the Deutsche Welle. The result is an extensive interview. The first part of the interview covers topics such as the World Championship match, how to prepare for the opening in modern (computer-aided) top-level chess, and the question of where Vincent Keymer still wants to improve.
You didn't play at the Rapid and Blitz World Championships in New York at the end of the year? Looking back, how happy are you with that decision?
2024 was a very exhausting year – working with Gukesh at the World Championship was also very demanding. Overall, there is little time over the holidays to prepare for the upcoming tournaments such as Wijk aan Zee. If I had gone to New York, combined with the long journey, I wouldn't have felt good about the following tournaments. To be honest, I didn't regret the decision.
You are now ranked in the top 20 in the world and are an established name in top-level chess. What do you think of your 2024?
It was a mixed year. Unfortunately I had a few tournaments that were plagued by illness. For example the Chess Olympiad in Budapest. For me it was a tournament in two parts. In the first four rounds I was really ill: I had a fever of 39 degrees at times and I also had nosebleeds. That affected the matches. But before that I'd won my first strong round-robin tournament (the Rubinstein Memorial in Polanica-Zdrój, Poland). To start there with five wins in the first six rounds was something special.
In any case, I worked very hard in 2024 - including the World Championship, of course - and now I hope to benefit from that work in 2025. Being in the top 20 is nice, but it's not where I want to be in the long term. That's why I still have some weaknesses to work on.
In which areas do you still want to improve?
It's about subtleties. I ask myself: What are the things that my chess still lacks and that work extremely well for other players, such as my Indian competitors?
There are also aspects that have to do with the way I trained as a child. Even then I played very strong tournaments. But because of school I never had much time to prepare with my long-time coach Peter Leko. We always tried to quickly put together an opening repertoire that would allow me to avoid immediate difficulties. That's why I still lack a bit of breadth in my repertoire. For example, it's also about what to play against slightly weaker opponents in order to have a chance of winning.
I definitely want to continue to improve step by step. I've always had a pretty good feeling for where to put the pieces. But in rather irrational positions, I sometimes lack the precision in depth when calculating. In any case, it's now a matter of a lot of small details – solving a few tactical puzzles every day is unfortunately not enough (laughs).
During the World Championship match between Gukesh and Ding Liren, it was often said that the new World Champion relied heavily on his calculation skills. Is there really such a difference between Asian calculation and European intuition?
There is a difference. Gukesh's play is much more based on calculation than mine. Of course, you have to combine the two. We humans are not able to calculate all the moves. You save a lot of thinking time if you select the right moves in advance. And a very good positional sense makes this easier. I also suspect that the way Gukesh and I play will converge over time.
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What was it like during the World Chess Championship? You were supporting Gukesh, a player who has a different style than you.
Team Gukesh: Vincent Keymer, Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Pentala Harikrishna | Photo: Vincent Keymer on Instagram
My job as a second during the match was, of course, to help prepare the openings. It's good to bring your own style and ideas to the table, but ultimately it's up to Gukesh and his head coach to decide. Of course, we had a direction before the match and knew what we wanted to look at in detail.
Did you use any special computers to prepare?
No, we used normal computers. I, for example, worked on the powerful PC that I usually work with. Nowadays, they are perfectly adequate for preparing the variations in a world championship match.
What was your impression of Ding Liren's preparation?
To put it somewhat unkindly, I got the impression that Ding had hardly prepared anything for the whole match. Sure, there were some little ideas. But it was clear that months of work had not gone into them.
Many experts were surprised that Ding Liren played the French in response to 1.e4 in the very first game. You too?
Photo: FIDE/ Eng Chin An
The French was number three in the line of openings we expected. We had prepared for it, but not that much. The bigger surprise was that Ding Liren kept playing the French. We had expected him to try something else after that.
Why did you not really get to grips with the French?
The biggest problem was that Gukesh lost the first game. The line with 3.Nc3 certainly has the greatest potential to cause problems for Black in the French. We had analysed the idea that Gukesh then played in the 13th game two weeks earlier. But it's a psychological challenge to repeat a line with which you lost.
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Magnus Carlsen's coach Peter-Heine Nielsen once said that novelties only work for one game in a World Championship match. (https://p.dw.com/p/4np8X). Do you agree?
With White, it's only possible to pose practical problems, because objectively, even with the best play, you can only expect a draw in the end. So playing the exact same line again is difficult if you want to get an advantage. With Black, I think it's different – as a rule, you just want to equalise at first. It's possible to repeat lines. But then you have to be prepared to suffer the pressure of your opponent's preparation.
What did you think about the time management during the match?
With Gukesh it was: the preparation is blitzed out. I think the general idea was to avoid getting into time trouble. Time trouble increases the risk of losing control, and that's the last thing you need. By contrast, Ding Liren's time management was very particular. But World Championship matches have their own rules, and after the first six rounds we had to count ourselves lucky not to be behind. That's because some games could have gone against us.
What did you learn for your chess while working for Gukesh?
First of all, I take concrete ideas for my own repertoire that I have been working with. When you know that your analysis will be used in a World Championship match, it requires even more precision. It's different from just sitting at home and working on your chess. And of course I have gained a practical insight into how a World Championship match works behind the scenes.
Part 2 will follow soon...
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