Introduction

After more than six months without playing an official game Vladimir Kramnik has made his comeback in the Turin Olympiad, playing as first board on the Russia team, and winning the FIDE Trophy for the best individual performance in Torino with an outstanding 2847 rating performance.

Minutes after the last round has finished, Vladimir takes a break in his tight schedule to talk to IM Michael Rahal, from the Spanish Peón de Rey Chess Magazine, in the Internet Chess Club booth in the playing venue.
 

The Turin Olympiad

Q: First of all an important question: you have just come back from nearly six months without playing official chess. How are you feeling? How is your health? Can we say that you will not have any more health problems in the future?

A: Well, my health is definitely much better than how it was and I am still under treatment. But of course these health problems influenced my play and you can see that here I have played much better. In general I think that everything is going in the right direction. .

Q: During the last years your tournament results have not been as good as you would have probably wished. Was that due to a lack of motivation, your recent health problems, or maybe because after defeating Kasparov your goals had already been fulfilled and it was difficult for you to find new aims?

A: I would say that maybe it is a kind of mixture of all these things. I would not like to go into details about it because whatever you say sounds like an excuse. What happened just happened, there were different reasons, in fact all of the reasons you mentioned played their role. But now it is a different time, it is a different situation. I am very motivated for my match with Topalov, I feel much better and I am playing better, so I have already forgotten about the past and I am only thinking of the future.

Q: Let’s talk about what happened today. Russia lost 3-1 against Israel the last match. Obviously the gold medal was out of reach but clearly the silver medal was an option. Have you talked to the rest of the team members about what happened?

A: We started well and everything seemed to be in order, and then things just started to go wrong in the middle of the tournament. Basically, I don’t know what happened and why the players were not in good shape. At some point we simply didn’t know who to put on the team. Although this year we fielded the strongest team we had a clear disaster on the fourth board. We made -4 on the fourth board, which is unbelievable for us. If you just make for example +3 that would be a good score and we would be fighting for first place. The fourth board was sort of “horror”, whoever we put it would be bad. Maybe we need some young players. I believe that you win the Olympiads on the fourth board. It’s always difficult to score an incredible amount of points on the first and second board, but usually you can score well on the fourth board, like Ukraine with Sergei Karjakin in Calvia 2004 or here Gabriel Sargissian with Armenia. Maybe for the future the best decision would be to bring some talented young players, very energetic ones that can score a lot of points. For example Evgeny Bareev: he is a very good player, but he missed some clear wins due to lack of energy. Basically we are a rather old team, averaging 29 years old. We need some young players especially for the last boards. I mean on the first three boards we have classic players who can hold, but then you need some pushers, a mixture of experience and young energetic players.

Q: Talking about young players, could you give us your opinion on the best young players around? What about young Russian players?

A: Well you know who all the young players are, Carlsen, Karjakin, Radjabov, they are all young and already very, very strong. I can’t say anything original about this. With regard to Russia I am not aware of the most recent developments; actually it is Evgeny Bareev who is working with the main players in his school. But unfortunately I don’t see much talent coming from our country and this is scaring for me as we shall not get any younger. Some of the players in this team already played in 1994, so you need some new blood at some point and at the moment I can’t see who can bring some new resources to the team. OK, we have some good players such as Malakhov, we have Jakovenko, but they are not much stronger than the rest of the guys. Bareev is already 40 you know, but I hope that he will be able to prepare in his school some young players for the Olympiad in two years time in Dresden.

Q: As you know Alexei Shirov hasn’t performed very well in this Olympiad although he was able to win his last two games. But Vishy Anand has played quite badly, losing about 20 rating points and only scoring 50% after losing against a 2500 player in the 12th found. It is true that he came on the fourth round after playing a strong event in Sofia, the Mtel Masters. Are you surprised by his bad result here?

A: Yes, I am quite surprised. He is such a good world-class player that even in bad shape, even if you wake him up in the middle of the night he should still play very well. But you shouldn’t draw any conclusions, these things happen. And I should remind you that in 1996, the year I overtook Kasparov in the rating lists, I played an Olympiad in Yerevan and I lost 21 rating points. It can happen, I don’t know why, but things just go wrong and wrong. But as I say, no conclusions should be drawn.

Q: Except for your game against Alexandrov in which you played 1.e4, maybe because of some specific preparation in the Berlin Defence, in your other games with White you seem to have gone back to your famous 1.Nf3/2.c4 and 1.d4 repertoire, but it seems to me that in some of these games, specifically against Aronian and Bruzon, you choose more aggressive variations inside this solid repertoire. Have you come back to this type of openings for good?

A: Well this is quite difficult to explain. Basically, I saw Khalifman’s book on Kramnik 1.Nf3 and had a look at it. It looked quite good and I said to myself “OK, let’s play some of these openings”. Well seriously, I can play any move, but it’s always nice when you can choose your first move, it makes things much more difficult for your opponent to prepare against you. Most of the players are dong this now. I will always try to choose the move which is the most unpleasant for my opponent in each game.

Q: With regard to your game with Alexandrov who was actually in good form as he had defeated Shirov the day before, what passed through your head the moment he made the “fingerfehler” 18…Bc8??. Did he take long to resign? Did you have any strange feelings for the unexpected way the game had finished?

A: Basically I was rather sure that I would win this game, as he had already misplayed the position and I had a very big advantage. Also, I have studied these positions very well so I was very confident. So when he went 18…Bc8, instead of 18…Kf7 19.Nc5 Bc8 I was confident that I would win the game. I was rather surprised, but nothing more, as technically the position is already very good for White.

Q: I had the opportunity to talk to Levon Aronian a while ago and one of the questions that came up was with regard to your third game win against him. Specifically I asked him about the pawn on c6. He said that allowing that pawn to arrive there was not a miscalculation but more a bad assessment. He thought that eventually he would be able to round up the pawn and win with his better structure. However it seems that you had a better understanding of the position. In addition to this we considered the slight resemblance to the position after 26.Rc6! in the famous Karpov-Kasparov 35th World Championship 1990 Game 17. Did you consider that your move 20.Rc6 would give you the win in that position?

A: Well in fact I could have taken the e7 pawn, and be a clear pawn up but there are certain technical problems to win that type of position, so I decided to keep equal pawns, but already when I played 20.Rc6 I had considered the ideas of transferring my bishop to a5, and play a4 and bring my queen to b4 and invade the queenside. After the game I analysed with the computer and I couldn’t see another way to continue, but it is rather logical. I couldn’t calculate to the end but it’s a matter of intuition, partly calculation, partly intuition and good assessment of the position. It should normally work, I mean with such a strong pawn on c6. I like pawns on the seventh rank (laughs).

The match against Topalov

Q: You are scheduled to play in Dortmund in July (July 29th – August 6th), a traditionally strong tournament. However, I suppose you are feeling confident after your performance in the Olympiad.

A: Well yes, actually my opponents rating here is similar to what I will find in Dortmund, well it will be a category higher there. But I will also be considering the Dortmund event as a part of my preparation for the match against Topalov and the computer match, which are my main events of the year. But of course I will try to do well in Dortmund.

Q: Do you have any other tournaments scheduled before Dortmund? Or will you be resting?

A: No I don’t have any other games scheduled although I will not be resting (laughs). Actually, I will be working very hard.

Q: You will be playing against Veselin Topalov in September for the World Title. You have a good score against Topalov, although the last results are slightly more favourable to him.

A: Well actually the last game we played I beat him (laughs), which was nice but in general he used to be quite a comfortable opponent for me, but that doesn’t matter too much in a match. Much more important in a match is your mental ability to play, your motivation and your preparation, this is what matters. Of course what happens in the past has certain influence. If you lose many games to a certain opponent, this stays in your mind, but unfortunately it is not decisive.

Q: In your best games book, I seem to recall at least five or six game against Veselin, with some convincing wins.

A: It’s quite funny and I don’t know why, but I used to play some very beautiful games against Topalov, especially against him, much more than against any other player, maybe because of his style which is rather aggressive, and because of his great fighting ability. It is rather funny but he is the main hero of the book.

Q: The contracts of your match with Topalov have been signed; the venue – Elista – and the dates have been decided. Will this match definitely close the schism that has been hanging over the world’s chess scene for the last years?

A: Yes, that is the whole point. This was supposed to be done already a couple of years ago, under the Prague agreements, but for some reason it didn’t happen. But I think that this match will definitely be good for chess. This situation is not good for everyone, not for me, not for Topalov, so I think that this is in the interest of everyone. I don’t know what will happen in the future, I don’t know if it will be useful or not, although I hope so. It gives a lot of opportunities to build a very strong road of chess.

Q: As you know, the winner of Topalov-Kramnik match is automatically seeded into the 8-player World Championship scheduled to be held in Mexico in 2007, whereas the looser forfeits all his rights. However, the candidate’s matches that should be held this year are not seeing the light. What do you have to say about this?

A: I actually don’t care about it at all because I am very eager and motivated to win the match so I don’t really care about what will happen if I lose.

Q: With regard to the match and your preparation for it, obviously we wouldn’t want to give Topalov too much information, but can you tell us anything about the way you are preparing this match, who are you working with? Maybe the same team as in your previous matches with Kasparov and Leko?

A: Sorry, I can’t talk about this. I hope you understand.

Your match with Deep Fritz

Q: You have a computer match with Deep Fritz scheduled for November, about a month after your World Championship match with Topalov. What can you tell us about the preparation for this match?

A: Actually, this match is a little problem I must admit. This match was fixed in advance and I didn’t know that I would be playing Topalov. As you know, the first offer that we made was refused for some reason, I don’t know why, but then we had to find the dates after the event was finally agreed. A match against a computer is very difficult anyway, and you have to really prepare a lot. I don’t have as much time as I would want to for the preparation of this match, but on the other hand I have certain time. I will try to do my best but nowadays computers are so strong that they are really difficult to play. I know I have chances and I will be very motivated, because it might be the last chance at all to beat the computer. I would say that already a computer is the favourite in a match against any player. That is clear for me now; you can see the results from Bilbao, the Adams-Hydra (0.5-5.5) match. I know that it’s not over yet, but I would really like to be the last person who defeats the computer, so I will do my very best in this match.

Q: But Vladimir, normally you have to prepare at least six months for a match with a top computer, and now you are preparing your match with Topalov?

A: Yes, but of course there will be certain players who will be doing some work on the computer while I am playing Topalov. So I don’t really start my preparation a month before as a lot of work will already have been done.

Q: You say that it may be the last opportunity for a man to defeat the computer, so you are confident of being able to achieve this? Are you worried that something like what Hydra did to Adams could happen to you?

A: I am confident I might be able to win, as I said I have my chances. I am not really worried, but I know for example that for some players like for instance Grischuk, he would be very worried to play against a computer, as if he lost 6-0 this would influence his play from then onwards. It is clear that computers are improving every day, every month, every year, and I know that my opponent will be very strong, but according to my information it should be fightable, and if I can fight I am already motivated, and if I have at least a one per cent chance I shall play for a win.

Q: Will you use the same sort of strategy that you used against Deep Fritz, in the “Brains in Bahrain” match? Do you have access to the program information, as the computer team has access to all your information?

A: Well first I must check all the recent games, how it is playing now. I have access to the information of the program, definitely. Since our match in Bahrain it has played many games, so I can check the databases to see these games. So once I have investigated the program completely then the strategy will be clear. Of course even if I had this strategy clear now I wouldn’t tell you about it, but this is not so.

Q: Are you still playing an active role in the ACP (Professional Chess Players Association)?

A: I am still a member of the ACP and of course I am pleased that the organisation still exists, but I am not playing any serious role there because I decided not to continue to run for the second period because of certain conflict of interests that could arise because of this match with Topalov. I know somebody was complaining about it and it was not just justified as I have never had any influence, I have never tried to use the Association for anything of course. It was the other way round, I was just helping. So OK, if somebody is not happy about it for me it’s no problem, but I am always ready to help them in a sensible way if I am needed.
 

IM Michael Rahal from Peón de Rey Magazine, Turin, Italy, June 2006