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The opening day is when you find the participants in the most relaxed frame of mind. Not affected by losses yet, nor tensed about winning the event, you are able to get the best out of them when it comes to interviews. That's the reason why I prepared a quiz for them! What was the topic of the quiz? Well, when Amruta and I visited the Tal Memorial in 2018, we decided to ask the players if they recollected the gems from the games of the great Mikhail Tal. Now that the players were in India and also Vishy Anand would be celebrating his 50th birthday, it looked obvious to ask them to recognize some of Anand's gems! I managed to get four players to solve these positions — Magnus Carlsen, Anish Giri, Vidit Gujrathi and Anish's second Erwin l'Ami.
Carlsen holding the sheets of paper in his hand and trying to think about the answers! | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour
So which were the positions that were given to them and how did these players fare? Well, we will put down these positions here. Try your hand at them and then have a look at how these super GMs performed!
Magnus and Vidit were the best performers scoring 8.0/9. But the ninth position was the one that no one could solve! Magnus was very impressive because he could remember not only the move (that he could even work out by looking at the position), but he also knew the name of the tournament and the year in which it was held! Now this is simply tremendous!
The 'Magnusificent' memory of Carlsen
For Anish there is no form of structured learning related to such games
He picked up a position some time ago from social media, one from a conversation and so on! Well, it just goes to show how many different ways of improving at chess exist!
Vidit was super quick for the first six positions and then found the going slightly tough!
Erwin l'Ami does well on the Anand's test!
A photo for posterity — all ten players in front of the national library | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour
