Buoyant after his impressive performances, World No. 2 Viswanathan Anand on Monday said he would keep the momentum going and strive to win the FIDE World Championship, scheduled at San Luis in Argentina in September.
"After I play in the Mainz tournament on August 9 and 10, I will focus and concentrate one hundred per cent on the proposed FIDE world championship for a positive result. All the eight top seeds have confirmed participating in the event," he told PTI on the sidelines of a NIIT function in Chennai.
Anand, the first non-Russian to win the Chess Oscar, has won the coveted title four times -- 1997, 1998, 2003, 2004.
"For me, it was a bit unexpected. We never had any warning that the World Championship is going to come up. But, on the whole, for me, it is very brilliant... I am very happy that it has come up because it is also something to focus on. It is always nice to have some immediate goal not just very long term," Anand said.
In 2004, Anand made a clean sweep of titles at the Melody Amber Rapid and Blindfold tournament, winning all the three sections.
"I just won everything I played. That is an awesome feeling. I need to keep the momentum going," the Grandmaster said.
On his plans for the coming season, Anand said, "I played well post Prague in 2002. I need to keep the momentum going. I feel I can still improve my chess knowledge. There are new areas to work on. I think keeping my curiosity in chess alive is what sparks my creativity. I am enjoying my chess immensely and I hope to do that this year too."
"At present, I am focusing on the Mainz tournament and will start to think of the World Championship in August only," Anand, flanked by his wife Aruna, said.
"Of course, I will do a special training camp, more importantly, since it is a double round-robin, it will be a tough format," Anand, considered by many as the world's leading player since Kasparov and Kramnik play fewer events, said.
Anand will be playing in Argentina after 11 years, having played in Buenos Aires in 1994 in a Sicilian tournament.
The Argentine World Championship with a purse of one million US dollars will be held in a double round-robin format similar to the one held in 1948 (where each player play the others four times.)
Apart from the Indian wizard, Rustam Kasimdzhanov (Uzbekistan), Michael Adams (England), Vladimir Kramnik (Russia), Peter Leko (Hungary), Garry Kasparov (Russia), Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria) and Alexander Morozevich (Russia) have confirmed their participation in the World Championship.
Federation Internationale Des Echecs (FIDE) was formed as an international chess body in the 1920s but had no real power over the championship until the death of legendary Russian World Champion Alexander Alekhine in 1946.
Like many previous champions, Alekhine treated the title as his personal fiefdom rejecting most challenges.
In the past, FIDE had set up a system of regional elimination contests, culminating in a challenge to the reigning champion about every three years. For many years the events ran smoothly, dominated by Soviet and East Bloc players.
The arrival of the maverick American, Bobby Fischer, signalled a return to some of the difficulties of the past. After beating Russian Boris Spassky in 1972, Fischer set a long list of conditions for a challenge from Anatoly Karpov.
FIDE met all but one of his demands and stripped the American of his title in 1975, awarding it to Karpov by default.
Later, a crisis touched the core of FIDE, which could not rescue the official world championship between Karpov and Jan Timman. After the first half of the match (12 games) took place in three Dutch cities (with Karpov leading Timman by seven points to five) the second half of the match in the Gulf State of Oman did not take place.
Then Kasparov and Britain's Nigel Short, the official challenger, broke with the FIDE to form the Professional Chess Association in 1993 and arranged their own championship with Britain's Times Newspaper. Provoked by this, the FIDE stripped both men of their titles.
Later, FIDE announced US $2.8 million in prize money for an official championship between losing semi-finalists Karpov and Timman but this also backfired.
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