Transcript of the interview

Arne Kähler: I’m absolutely delighted to have Vishy Anand with me—one of the greatest chess players of all time. You’ve played numerous World Championship matches, helped bring chess to a new level in India, and achieved so much. And now you’re here in Cyprus—we’ll come back to that shortly. But first, I’d like to go back to 1988.

Back then, you received floppy disks from Frederic Friedel, one of the co-founders of ChessBase. Can you take us back to that moment? What did it feel like to suddenly have a database of games on a computer?

Vishy Anand: In 1987, about a month after I became World Junior Champion, I went to London and bought an Atari computer. I took it home and started entering my games manually from my scoresheets, typing them out move by move. It was quite painful. Frederic kept telling me how revolutionary databases would be—how this was the future of preparation, how Kasparov was already using it—but at first I didn’t really see it. It just felt like a lot of work.

Then, in December, he sent me some floppy disks in this big padded package. For younger viewers, you might need to look up what a floppy disk is. I put the disk into my computer and suddenly had a few hundred games available instantly. That’s when it clicked—it was so much faster than typing everything in myself. I began to understand that it wasn’t just about having a computer; you needed a database as well.

That was a big step forward. It meant you no longer had to carry around piles of tournament bulletins and books. In those days, there were magazines that published games from several tournaments at once—hundreds of games in total—and you had to bring all of that with you. Suddenly, your luggage became much lighter.

Of course, once we discovered games like Minesweeper, productivity suffered a bit. You could waste time very efficiently!

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Let’s jump ahead to 2010, your World Championship match against Veselin Topalov. There were photos of your preparation setup—it looked almost like a cockpit, with multiple computers. Do you remember that setup?

Yes, we were using fairly powerful hardware for the time. I remember discovering a company that made dual-core laptops, which effectively gave me four cores to run my engines. At the time, that felt incredible—everything became much faster, from analysis to database searches. But those machines were heavy.

I had already started using remote engines around 2008, during my match with Kramnik. We set up engine servers and connected to them remotely. That was exciting, but in 2010 the internet still wasn’t reliable enough to depend on entirely. So we had to carry strong local hardware as a backup.

You once said something along the lines of: the more information is available, the less you can actually know. In today’s world of engines and massive databases, what separates the top players?

Probably the ability to understand a few things really well. Whether those ideas are ultimately right or wrong matters less, because much of what we “know” today will be outdated in a few years. When I look back at my own preparation, it sometimes seems almost naïve compared to what modern engines show.

What matters is context—knowing when and how to apply your knowledge. We’re flooded with information, but the key is making sense of it and knowing what you can rely on in a practical game.

When you compare today’s young players to earlier generations, is it even the same game?

It’s quite different. I sometimes think of it like travel in the past. Players used to spend days or weeks getting to tournaments, often with a lot of uncertainty. Today everything is streamlined—you book flights, make changes online, everything is predictable.

In the same way, chess has become more structured and more “solved” in certain areas. But the skill now lies in absorbing information and applying it correctly. Young players have grown up in this environment—they’re natives of this world. For my generation, there’s always a comparison with how things used to be.

Let’s talk about two of those young players—Sindarov and Gukesh. Do you have much contact with them?

I got to know Sindarov a bit during the Global Chess League, where he was on my team. What stood out was his confidence. You could give him any position and he would handle it. That resilience impressed me.

With Gukesh, I’ve had more interaction, especially through my academy. I’ve followed his development closely and offered some guidance along the way, including suggestions about coaching as he progressed.

They could meet in a very young World Championship match. Who would you favor?

It will come down to preparation, mindset, and attitude. Right now, Sindarov has strong momentum and might be the favorite. But Gukesh has been in a similar position before—he had a fantastic run not long ago. If he finds his form again, he has every chance.

You’ve played multiple World Championship matches. Has the pressure changed over time?

Computers have changed things a lot. There’s less room for unexplored territory. Today, if your opponent has prepared the same line, it’s hard to create chances. That’s why players now look for unusual ideas—to take the game out of well-trodden paths.

Preparation is broader now. It’s not just openings—you also need to convert advantages precisely. The whole approach has evolved.

Finally, since you’ve been using ChessBase from the very beginning—what’s your advice to users?

One of the most powerful features is searching by position or structure. If you’re trying to understand a certain type of position, you can find many similar examples and study how the pieces typically operate.

It’s not just about finding specific moves, but about understanding patterns more broadly—when certain ideas work and why. That kind of study is still incredibly valuable, and ChessBase remains a very powerful tool for that.

Thank you very much for your time and your insights.

Thank you.

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