Viswanathan Anand, a five-time
world champion, on Monday said that there was nothing to separate between him
and his one-time arch rival Russia’s Vladimir Kramnik. The Russian, who announced a shock retirement in
2019, was the first unified world champions and shared an intense rivalry with
the Indian for many years. Kramnik lost to Anand in the 2008 World
Championships.

“Out of the 20
odd years we have swapped the number 2-3 position. We were always very close to
each other in terms of points, so close that when he retired our scores were
absolutely identical even after more the 150 games,” PTI quoted Anand as
saying.

Also Read | Chess Olympiad: India, Russia declared co-champions, awarded with gold medals

Kramnik became the
first undisputed world champion in 2006, holding both the FIDE and Classical
titles, since Garry Kasparov split from FIDE in 1993.

“Well we joined
the top of the world chess roughly at the same time, I joined two years ahead
of him. At that point I did not remember it yet, but later on he told me that
we had met 3 years ago,” Anand said about Kramnik, who defeated the
legendary Garry Kasparov in 2000 to become Classical World Chess champion.

“I played him
once in 1989 which kind of slipped my mind but I met him again in 1992 and that
year was his breakthrough moment,” said the 50-year-old Anand, who held
the world champion title between 2007 and 2012.

Also Read | PM Modi congratulates India’s chess team on winning gold

Asked about certain
tricks he needed during the final showdown against Kramnik, Anand said,
“Well for the world championship the schedule is fairly luxurious, but
that gives you some sort of a starting point. We used to play one white one
black, then there is a rest day and it goes on. The idea is to take two games
at a time.

“The real
difficult moment comes after game 10, because after that he managed to pin
point one weakness. It was all about making some logical improvisations, but we
had done such good work and we had two white pieces.

“So I managed to neutralize him fairly
early. In fact the 11th game did not last very long.”