Young players have an edge in chess: Anand

Five-time world chess champion Viswanathan Anand on Friday said that he is still rectifying his mistakes but believes young talent has now got an edge in the sport.

The 45-year-old lost to world No.1 Magnus Carlsen of Norway in 2013 and 2014 in the World Chess Championship.

"Clear enough, (game is for the youth) look at the top 10, average age is 30. Median age is 20 and some are around 22. Top players are younger but as long as I am happy I will compete. I will try but you just cannot ignore the fact that the peak age for chess is not 40, its below," Anand told reporters here at the Blender's Pride Fashion tour.

"When you are younger you calculate better but later on you have to think how can you put one in," he said.

"I am constantly rectifying and I will keep trying and you have to constantly work on your mistakes."

Anand believes Carlsen who is now 24 years old is from a different generation and that he and Kramnick are just hanging in there.

"(Vladimir) Kramnick and me are still hanging in there. Kramnick and my way of thinking is almost the same because we were roughly born in the same era, so we have the same way of doing things. Carlsen is from a different generation, the computer generation, but very different to compare all these players," he said.

Speaking on whether it is an advantage going into the World Chess Championship as one of the top ranked players, Anand said: "There are no advantages and disadvantages. It only matters how many points you score there, it only matters what you do as candidates. Anything you are carrying forward to make you feel good, gives you the energy to do well, perfect! other than that nothing."

The former world No.1 also said that he has not been in the right frame of mind for the last two or three events and added challenges were getting tough with time.

"In the last two events I did not do well and somehow was not in the right frame of mind. So I will have to keep on working and developing more ideas. But it is getting difficult with time. At 20 and all tournament's were a piece of cake," said Anand who recently lost his mother.

Anand said the loss is something which can only heal with time.

"First of all, it is something that hits you (mother's loss), something that you don't recover from. Also she was close to my chess. She expected me to call her up and tell her everything how I settled in and all, she also followed by game closely.

"It's tough to go back to Chennai and something is missing. And then there's one number you don't call anymore. Time helps a bit. It is painfull, but you have to get on with life," he added.