The King of Chess

Anand is to chess what Pele is to football. He is an amazing champion of the game. I have followed Anand’s chess for sometime in late teens. I learned that e4 is the best first move from his games. I have strong liking for chess, it makes you think. I don’t recall when I learned this game since we had chess at home even before I was born. I was playing this game quite early. Those days I was not aware of castling as also that you have to say ‘check’ when attacking the King. King was attacked surreptitiously and the game was over!!. We also tried to distract the opponent when the King is on the line and presto the game is over!!. Since many of friends (in Primary school) didn’t know this game I mostly used to play this game alone on summer afternoons but we did had a round of chess after the dinner at home sometimes, and I did look forward to it.

In college when in hostel there was a chess playing group. We used to play almost every night the looser would sponsor the dinner. It was even money for me. I consider myself as an average and quite erratic when it comes to chess. For almost a decade I lost contact with chess, getting into the rut of finding a career and so on. Recently though I have started to play the game on Net, there really are some very smart players out there. I also have a software of chess in my comp. and by god it is quite tough!!. The guys who created these software are super genius.

Anand is too good a player, most importantly it is difficult to be consistent for so many years. I also have followed Kasporov’s game for sometime (he is now into Russian politics, very much a challenge to Putin!!. The way opposition is handled in Russia he could even be killed). I happen to see a documentary sometime back on how the Deep Blue Super computer may have had a human hand, it was quite controversial, Kasporov though did feel cheated. It seemed to be a marketing gimmick of colossal proportion.

Chess is an amazing invention and that it is contribution of Indians is quite heartening. Some of the chess moves are taken from real life, like the elephants that would run through the opponent with spears on it the reason why it has vertical and horizontal moves, I saw that in one of the channels.

A good game of chess can even refresh dullest of mind. So go ahead make the move!!