Carl Ja­cobs

When he lost his world ti­tle last No­vem­ber in an in­dif­fer­ent dis­play against Nor­we­gian star Mag­nus Carlsen, the chess world was ready to write off 44-year-old Vish­wanathan Anand as an age­ing phe­nom­e­non whose glo­ry days were all but over.

Af­ter all, the In­di­an gi­ant had al­ready made his claim to chess im­mor­tal­i­ty by a five-time con­quest of the world cham­pi­onship, a 19-year feat that may well re­main un­blem­ished in the his­to­ry books. Al­so, his hu­mil­i­a­tion at the hands of the young Nor­we­gian was so com­plete that it seemed to mark a point of his de­cline.

But to the amaze­ment, if not the de­light, of chess lovers across the globe, the Tiger from Chen­nai has now demon­strat­ed that the roy­al game al­so has its glo­ri­ous un­cer­tain­ties.

Anand, who had failed to win a game in his clash with Carlsen, played un­beat­en in the re­cent Can­di­dates tour­na­ment earn­ing a hand­some vic­to­ry against sev­en of the world's best and a re­match against the bril­liant young­ster who had de­throned him.

The In­di­an icon won three games and drew eleven in the dou­ble round-robin elim­i­na­tion con­test in Khan­ty Man­siyisk. He fin­ished on eight and a half points, a full point ahead of sec­ond-placed Segey Kar­jakin. His marathon 91-move draw against the Russ­ian in the penul­ti­mate round as­sured him of an unas­sail­able lead af­ter top seed Lev­on Aron­ian suf­fered a painful up­set against world No. 43 Dim­it­ry An­drekin.

Anand opened his re-match cam­paign with a spec­tac­u­lar win over pre-tour­na­ment favourite Aron­ian, skill­ful­ly trap­ping his op­po­nent's knight at the edge of the board.

In the third round, the ex-cham­pi­on crushed Mam­e­d­yarov with a tac­ti­cal on­slaught, a clear in­di­ca­tion that he was back in top form. Round nine pro­duced the turn­ing point as Kram­nik and Aron­ian, both hot on his heels, went un­der while Anand dis­patched his old ri­val Vaselin Topalov.

Clear­ly work­ing in Anand's favour al­so was the qual­i­ty of the Can­di­dates where every com­bat­ant was ca­pa­ble of bring­ing down a fan­cied op­po­nent. And so the sto­ry went. The fi­nal ta­ble made for strange read­ing, with one play­er un­de­feat­ed and every one else los­ing at least twice.

The Times of In­dia ob­served: "It is clear that de­spite los­ing his abil­i­ty to churn out mas­ter­pieces, Anand's so­lid­i­ty and risk free chess proved to be a big fac­tor in the Can­di­dates."

Some com­men­ta­tors have hailed the 44-year-old In­di­an's vic­to­ry as "one of the great­est come­backs in chess his­to­ry."

So far, of course, Anand's per­for­mance is cer­tain­ly im­pres­sive, but oth­ers feel that his "come­back" would not re­al­ly be com­plete if he fails to re­gain the world ti­tle from the young Nor­we­gian who re­lieved him of it last No­vem­ber.

What­ev­er the case, the ami­able In­di­an ge­nius has now be­come the sec­ond old­est play­er in FIDE world chess cham­pi­onship his­to­ry to win a re­match. On­ly Vick­tor Ko­rch­noi was old­er (50) when he earned a re­match with Kar­pov in 1981. Mikhail Botvin­nik al­so de­throned Mikhail Tal in 1961 at the age of 50 but he ben­e­fit­ed from the pol­i­cy of a di­rect re­match.

Now what do the com­men­ta­tors say about Anand's chances of achiev­ing an un­be­liev­able sixth reign as world chess cham­pi­on?

"It's hard to say if Anand is play­ing any bet­ter than he played against me," says Carlsen. "But then Chen­nai was a dif­fer­ent kind of game. He is more prag­mat­ic in his ap­proach, maybe too prag­mat­ic at times."

The leg­endary Kas­parov tweets: "Anand will be the un­der­dog to Carlsen, clear­ly. But chess his­to­ry has shown re­match­es have their own dy­nam­ics. Rarely a re­peat of the first."

Eng­lish GM Nigel Short proph­e­sied that Anand would not suc­ceed in re­cap­tur­ing the world ti­tle be­cause "top class chess is a young man's game."

One com­men­ta­tor sent this mes­sage to Carlsen: "This is not the same Vishy you faced last year. Vishy is com­ing back for his throne."

DR's guess: We'll just have to wait and see.

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