MARK RUBERY CHESS

Big Think is a global forum connecting people and ideas. The site has conducted long video interviews with over twelve thousand thought leaders, from Nobel Prize winning scientists to award-winning novelists. Anatoly Karpov was the first chess player to be approached by them. Here follows an excerpt from the interview.

What qualities does it take to play world-class chess?

Anatoly Karpov: A lot of things. Chess is a very tough game, and psychologically a tough game. And of course chess needs a lot of qualities, human qualities. And so you must have very strong nervous system and then you must be well prepared, you must be able to work a lot. Chess need good preparation and so you must work for hours if you play, let’s say, for the world championship.

What is the appeal of chess?

Anatoly Karpov: I like beauty in chess. I like interesting ideas that could be fantastic combination, but it could be also very deep positional idea, or, or very high level technique in endings. So, I can feel and I can see beauty in each of this; beauty of chess, but also chess is always competition and so I like to compete and so this is part of my life.

At what age do chess players usually peak?

Anatoly Karpov: So, in my time, it was from let’s say 25 to 35, now it’s earlier because you have easier information then you have computers and then okay maybe young people changed and so now I think it should be from maybe 18 even, or at least 20 to 30.

Why should children play chess?

Anatoly Karpov: Chess can develop very important characteristics, individual characteristics. First of all, chess develops logic, memory, and then with chess you can easily understand the necessity of plan. then you can learn how to make strategy, which is important for normal life, for any profession and that’s why chess is entering school programs in many countries because teachers realize that with help of chess you can give this knowledge much easier than with the help of other subjects.

How do remain calm after you realize you’ve made a poor move?

Anatoly Karpov: This is very important and a good question because many people would call back the situation, they missed chances, and then of course it will spoil the rest of the game. But it is concerning not only special situation during the game, but also the bad result of previous game for the next game you play. So, in my life, I tried and I succeeded in many cases to forget everything that was in the past. So, of course you need to make some analysis and not to repeat mistakes, but it’s extremely important to accept situation like it is, the real situation, not with thoughts of regrets of what you missed and okay, two moves ago you had winning position now, you have to defend a difficult position and probably you might lose the game. WHITE TO PLAY AND WIN SEE DIAGRAM