Top Ranked chess players and even former World champions are taking up the role of seconds. But surprisingly, Viswanathan Anand has said that he may not turn into a second at any time in his career, since they indulge in quite strenuous work. 

A day after his after his arrival on Friday, while sitting relaxed on a sofa at his apartment in RA Puram, Anand said, “I have excellent understanding with his team of seconds and it went like a dream.” 

The well known chess player had a four member team comprising Peter Heine-Nielsen (Denmark), Surya Sekhar Ganguly (India), Wojtasek (Poland) and former World champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov (Uzbekistan), for the record. 

Viswanathan Anand confessed about his team of seconds in Bonn where he beat Vladimir Kramnik for his third World title, “The seconds go through similar stages of stress, sometimes even more than the player himself and they work overtime. Sometimes, I used to go to their place at 10 in the morning and some of them would have just gone to sleep having worked all night. And the best time for them to sleep in Bonn was when I was playing.”

Back in 1991, Anand employed a second for the first time (Ferdinand Hellers) in his match against Alexei Dreev of Russia in Chennai. Anand hired Mikhail Gurevich, the Russian born Belgian GM who had worked with Kasparov earlier, for his second match in the Candidates stage against Anatoly Karpov of Russia the same year. Anand said, “Gurevich is a thorough professional and I had no apprehensions that he was a Russian.”

 “I knew two of them before as I had worked with both Nielsen and Surya (Ganguly) before our preparations started in April. Then I took a couple of risks by adding Rustam (Kasimdzhanov) and Radaslav (Wojtasek),” admitted the World champion, who admitted that he found the right combination for the Bonn match. 

He added, “I was impressed by his game. Rustam was getting better especially after 2005. In the match (at Bonn) in Game 3, Rustam understood what I wanted and planned everything.”

Anand deeply feels that the second is not just a chess trainer for him. He explained, “They can suggest the little nuances after the game and we had these inside jokes as well. At no stage did I have to tell them what to do; instead, they guided my work.”