Future of Indian chess looks promising: Anand

Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand on Thursday said that the future of Indian chess "looks promising" and some players will soon break into the top 10 of the FIDE ratings.

Anand, currently at the 15th spot at the FIDE rankings, picked the likes of Pentala Harikrishna and Vidit Gujarathi as the players expected to be among the top-10 in the coming years.

"I would say Hari (P Harikrishna), Vidit (Gujrati), Surya (Sekar Ganguly), Sasi (K Sasikiran) (as the players of the future). Sooner or later somebody from India will break into top 10. Things are looking promising for India as we have a lot of talent," Anand told PTI here during an interaction.

"Players like Praggu (R Praggnanandhaa, who recently won a tournament in London), Nihal Sarin, D Gukesh, Raunak Sadhwani and there are more. Things are looking good for Indian chess," he added.

Anand, who turned 50 on Wednesday, said competition among the world's elite has become really tough and few players have been able to hold on to their positions.

He agreed that the gap between world number one Magnus Carlsen of Norway and the rest of the players was a "big" one, but said players like Fabiano Caruana (2nd in FIDE rating) and China's Ding Liren (3rd) were doing well in recent times.

"At the moment, the gap between Carlsen and others is a big one. (Fabiano) Caruana and Ding (Liren) are doing incredibly well as well in recent times."
Asked why Carlsen was so special, Anand said, "He is able to basically execute his skills. He has a lot of talent to begin with and puts in a lot of hard work. He is very good at learning new things."
"It is a journey through my career and world of chess, the things that I learnt, the struggles that I faced."
"I have written about the rivalries with them, how I experienced them, how I won through them. I learnt a lot from them also."
On the use of computers in chess, he said, "When I started playing chess, computers had nothing to do with chess. Now they have almost everything to do with chess."