2019 has been disappointing for me, admits Anand

Indian chess wizard Viswanathan Anand on Thursday admitted that 2019 has been very disappointing for him in terms of results, and said had it not been for some "sloppy moments", the scenario could have been different.

The five-time world champion did not have best of results in 2019, finishing in tied third spots in both the 81st Tata Steel Masters in Wijk aan Zee and also at the 2019 Gashimov Memorial chess tournament in Shamkir, Azerbaijan.

And Anand said not just from personal point of view but from the country's perspective as well, 2019 has not been a fruitful year for Indian chess players.

"From the chess side, 2019 has been slightly disappointing for me and may be for India as well. Despite all the players we had, nobody qualified for the Candidates. Personally, I had the feeling that I let everything go at the last minute," Anand told reporters here.

"At many tournaments, I was in good positions at the half way mark but one sloppy moment and I used to fall back in the middle and this repeated over and over again.

"At the The Grand Chess Tour, I had my best performance ever, because my Rapid stabilised compared to earlier years, but again in the last minute it fell. So, I had this little bit of feeling that it could have been a much better year," he said.

Anand was speaking after reading out excerpts from his book "Mind Master: Winning lessons from a Champion's Life" organsied by 'Fincare Small Finance Bank', for which he is the brand ambassador.

"(R) Praggnanandhaa had a very good result in London but the tendency is to look at the last result. All youngsters are making steady progress with the usual ups and downs, associated with the game. So, from their perspective, I wouldn't use the word disappointing but nothing stands out for India," explained the first Grand Master from India.

Anand also informed that he was going to skip the World Blitz and Rapid Chess tournament, which he had decided earlier and also termed the year gone by as a "hectic" one. The tournament is slated to be held in Russia.

He also attributed the rise in number of grandmasters in the country to the advent of technology.

"It (the growth of chess) has been mentioned, but this (the book) is my story and life lessons, so I didn't want to get heavily into that but there are couple of pattern. In 2000, we had 6-7 grandmasters. I became GM in December 1988, next happened in 1990, very slow and then it picked up a lot of speed.

"I remember saying that I am really looking forward to next GM because it will be (the) 64th and within couple of weeks of that announcement, we had 65 (GMs) already and this number is increasing very fast," Anand said.