Vishy Anand: recommendation

Transcript context

…Speaking of Kramnik — in your match against Kramnik, you played 1.d4 a number of times, which was surprising. Why didn’t he respond with a more hyper-theoretical line, like try the Grünfeld, say, and try to catch you unprepared? Because usually, you’ve played e4 in your career, at least up till then. That’s right. What had changed in the meantime — one is computers, which meant that even a player who didn’t have a lot of experience in an opening might simply have good computer moves. If you have good computer moves — you understand them well, and you play them where they’re supposed to be played — then understanding cannot make up for it. The computer evaluation gap is just too strong. Imagine that the computer says, “This move and you are plus one.” I’ll take that against anyone. I’ll take that even against a specialist, because those are pretty good odds. In fact, it is one of the things which has leveled preparation, that a club player who knows one opening well can play against a top grandmaster in that opening. The top grandmaster’s insight has to be, take a look at the club player, gauge what work he might have done, have a sense of what areas he specializes in, then avoid them at all costs because that’s the best strategy for success. You avoid the club player’s preparation. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing it well or bad; the difference in level will show. If you play into anything where the computer could have had a guiding hand, you have pretty bad luck. Anyway, the thing with Kramnik was that I had a team. All of them were d4 specialists. We had eight months during which I could have trained a lot. We trained a lot on d4. We found interesting ideas. I played training games, again, to make up for the lack of understanding. Play training games, check it again with the computer, go deeper and deeper, try to understand hidden nuances, and so on. I was pretty confident that we had lines prepared against the Grünfeld and King’s Indian. In fact, I had a complete d4 repertoire, start to finish. Even the most obscure lines, the job to my second was, “Give me a line that doesn’t lose and I don’t look embarrassing. I can make a few moves, come back, and then we can go drill deeper if he does something unexpected.” It wouldn’t have been that easy, but if he had the confidence, it wasn’t a bad strategy to try. He could have done it. Not because he thinks he’s going to outplay me, but because he thinks, “Well, I know this just as well as you. Let’s see what you’ve got.” It’s that kind of thing. It’s not quite as easy. In fact, I faced this often myself in reverse, that Kramnik used to play e4 suddenly a lot against me. It’s very nice to say I have more experience than him, but where should I strike? Which is the area he is likely to be weakened? That’s not easy to pick out. Two of your wins with black in that match are from the Semi-Slav. He let you get very tactical positions. Why would he make that kind of mistake?…

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