‘Anand always vibes positive thoughts’

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It was never an exaggeration when the whole country talks about world chess champion Viswanathan Anand as a true ambassador.

Talk to any chess grandmaster and they would profusely admit that the game of chess has never seen a better world champion, who is also a great human being.

Be it the senior players are the budding new ones, everyone is in awe of Vishy and they all want to meet him and play with him.

“He only vibes positive thoughts. Whenever he talks, you could see a pleasant smiling face and a fresh thinking,” said Gandmaster Kiril Dimitrov Georgiev of Bulgaria, who is in India in his personal capacity as coach of Orissa teenager Debashis Das.

Walking around the tournament in an unassuming manner, the 46-year-old Bulgarian GM is still a force to be reckoned with in the international tournaments.

A member of the Bulgarian Olympiad team, Georgiev coaches youngsters only when he is free. At the Turin Olympiad in 2006, he drew with India’s Vishy Anand, who had already become world champion.

“Anand leads our individual encounters at 3.5 to 2.5,” said the Bulgarian GM, who played the Indian genius for the first time at the world juniors in 1984.

“I was then the defending champion and I beat Anand in his first world junior event,” Georgiev said.

But then, Georgiev couldn’t translate his success at the world juniors to reach the pinnacle of glory in the senior level.

“I was a strong player and was even ranked in the top ten in 1993, but somehow, I didn’t reach the top like a few who climbed the senior ranks with elan and even became world champions,” he added.

However, today, he feels, the youngsters definitely need the title of world junior champion, if they want to move faster in the senior circuit.

“Those days we don’t see many GMs with 2500 elo and above play in the junior event. But today, we have GMs above 2600 elo and more competing. So the competition has increased manifold and only with regular success in international tournaments and world level events, one can rise to become an ultimate world champion,” Georgiev observed.