Chess | Viswanathan Anand’s strange take on Magnus Carlsen – ‘He used to be quite a limited player’ | Chess News

Five-time World Champion Viswanathan Anand has made a startling revelation that Magnus Carlsen used to be a “limited” player in his younger days.Interestingly, it was Carlsen who ended Anand’s long reign at the pinnacle of the sport.“Magnus (Carlsen) used to be quite a limited player, very, very good in that specific area,” Anand said on Prakhar Gupta’s podcast.“He limited himself to areas where no one else was really focusing, like the endgame and dry technical positions.“He saw potential where others basically saw paint drying, and he was able to lure a lot of unsuspecting chess players to their doom over and over again.“He was really cashing in those points before people learned the hard way to take those positions seriously and start working on them,” he added.

Anand also reflected on his matches against Carlsen in 2013 and 2014. In 2013, Anand lost his World Championship title to Carlsen and then failed to recapture it in 2014 after winning the Candidates.“I was in a chess crisis from roughly the end of 2010 until, well, after the match in 2013.“I was really struggling with my game, and while I was working, I think I was unable to adapt to the new trends and developments.“At the same time, I was working harder and harder in my old ways, trying to catch up, and it wasn’t working. This frustration climaxed in a pretty pathetic defeat in Chennai.“But then I suddenly had this realisation… when I took a lot of pressure off myself and just tried to play for fun and experiment a bit more.“I eventually won the Candidates in 2014 and played Magnus again. I think I played much better this time… a lot of the games were at least two-way battles that could have gone either way before they went in his favour. So that’s my story,” said Anand.