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Viswanathan Anand pressured deep understanding over memorisation in chess, highlighting the significance of sample recognition.
Viswanathan Anand (Norway Chess/X)
5-time World Champion Viswanathan Anand believes that in in the present day’s engine-driven period, deep understanding, not countless knowledge, is what actually separates elite chess gamers.
Talking on the inaugural session of a three-day chess workshop on Thursday, Anand mirrored on how the explosion of computer-generated evaluation has modified the sport.
“Funnily sufficient, the extra that’s accessible so that you can know, the much less you possibly can know. If on daily basis you’re subjected to twenty, 30 new conclusions, how do you make sense of it? I imagine that the one factor that separates chess gamers in the present day is deep understanding,” Anand stated.
Drawing parallels to his personal transition into the pc age many years in the past, the previous world No. 1 stated openness to new concepts is important — however it’s the grasp of tremendous particulars that elevates a participant.
Patterns, Not Memorisation
Anand was fast to dismiss the concept that trendy mastery is about rote studying opening strains.
Having performed between 6,000 and seven,000 aggressive video games over his profession, he defined that chess energy comes from unconscious sample recognition.
“Our mind places collectively much more patterns than we’re capable of clarify,” he stated, noting that concepts usually resurface weeks later with out gamers realising they’re “copying one thing from some place else.”
He in contrast chess to language acquisition.
“It’s a must to develop that feeling, similar to a language you can’t be taught solely from dictionaries; you be taught it by talking it,” he remarked.
Theoretical preparation, he added, is barely the place to begin — mere “materials substances” earlier than the true “cooking” begins over the board.
Increasing the Chess Ecosystem
Anand additionally backed efforts to unfold chess past Chennai — lengthy thought-about India’s chess capital — to cities like Madurai, Salem and Coimbatore.
The workshop, organised by the Velammal Training Belief from February 12–14, additionally marked the launch of Anand’s ebook Lightning Child.
(with PTI inputs)
February 12, 2026, 13:46 IST
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