Vishy Anand: evaluation

Transcript context

…Your match against Topalov — you had help from Kramnik, Kasparov, Carlsen. How did they each help you differently? And how does that reflect something about them as chess players? Carlsen — he had already been my sparring partner before the match with Kramnik, and we repeated that, literally. He came over; we played three days of blitz, five-minute chess. The idea was I would select all the positions that I was going to use and play it against him. We would not tell Carlsen what we were going to play. We were using Carlsen’s strength as a practical player and saying, “If I surprise you with this, let me see how you react. Maybe you’ve faced this before. Let me see how you react, and try to play against that. ” Because I thought Carlsen is of the level of Kramnik and Topalov, so playing against him gives me a good sense of how they’ll play, how the games will materialize, and so on. He did that both times. He didn’t help much during the match, I think once in a while. Nielsen was obviously in touch with him. They would chat on Skype or whatever, and he might give an impression, but it wasn’t more than that. Kasparov would call in a couple of times. He gave me some of his notes in specific openings. He said, “Look, they’re outdated, but for what it’s worth, here they are. You can check them with modern analysis and so on. That’s fine.” Kramnik was the heaviest. We had come to the conclusion that Kramnik’s approach against Topalov hadn’t been a bad approach. We were copying the Catalan, what we call the Elista variation of the Slav Defense, and we were copying many aspects of how he played that match. Because he doesn’t like to be passive, right? Is that how you think about it?…

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