Vishy Anand: belief

Transcript context

…How is it you think that playing so much as a streamer seems to have made Nakamura better? Psychologically better too, right? I don’t think the streaming helps him become a better player, but what it has done is, it’s taken a lot of pressure off him. He really felt he had only one way to show who he was, and that was on the chess board. Now, he suddenly realizes, “I’ve got this other method where people appreciate me and cheer me.” In fact, many years ago, in 2011 in Tata Steel, he made a winner speech, and I was surprised the way he said. He said, “It’s so wonderful to be in Holland where we’re appreciated for our chess. In the US, nobody would care,” or something like that. He did this as the winner in the closing speech. I thought, “Well, quite a strange thing to say.” If you had kept that thought in the background, now he’s got the adulation he wants. In fact, he seems to crave it. He goes back and does a recap every day, and things like that. He really seems to want it. What I think is helping him is playing blitz tournaments nonstop online. That allows him to keep there, and it might be the best way to train for a modern computerized opening preparation era, where there’s so little to do with preparation because the computer solves everything, but you get to test every concept a million times over the board. That’s why he’s so good at it. That’s why all the best players now are playing these online blitz events. You can put me on the spot and say, “Well, if you think that’s the case, why aren’t you doing it?” I haven’t got round. I do some training online, but I don’t feel like sitting from midnight till 3:00 in the morning playing online blitz, these Tuesday events, and so on. If you were much younger, could you imagine yourself as a streamer?…

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