Few weeks after his stinging criticism of his predecessor Viswanathan Anand over the jeans controversy, former world champion Magnus Carlsen has praised the Indian legend and spoken about the time when he was blown away by the five-time world champion.
Carlsen was talking about a time he was invited by Anand for a training camp as the Indian was readying himself for a world championship title bid in 2008 against Vladimir Kramnik.
Carlsen had in fact visited Anand’s home in Madrid and played training games with him, where Anand handed him a reality check.
“I’ve been very fortunate about being able to study with Gary Kasparov and (Viswanathan) Anand, who was a world champion before me. It’s only then when you study, like you talk to them, that you understand how good they really are and how much they, they understand. For instance, with Anand, I had a training session in 2008, where we had both played a tournament where I’d done decently while he had sort of, towards the end, he had nailed it in. But he was preparing for the classical world championship.
Former world champion Magnus Carlsen on the Joe Rogan podcast. (Screenshot: YouTube/
@PowerfulJRE)
“I went to Madrid for a couple of days to his house. As soon as like that training camp started, it’s like something just switched on with him and he was, he was just so focused. We played a bunch of training games and from being this guy who seemed completely disinterested in this other tournament, all of a sudden, like he was crushing me. He had a massive plus score in our games and it felt like everything we analyzed, he just had a much deeper understanding of the game, seeing that he was fast tactically and everything. And it made me appreciate like how good he actually was,” Carlsen narrated on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast where he was guest recently.
Magnus Carlsen podcast interview with Joe Rogan
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Carlsen said that Anand beating him soundly in training games made him feel that he was “delusional”.
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“It was just a reality check for me because I thought that that point that I was ranked, I think, third in the world. I was very briefly ranked number one already at that point, for like a week. I thought before that training camp I was maybe one of the best two, three players in the world. It made me realize that I wasn’t, and that maybe I was able to have better results than my actual level because of youth energy and optimism. That made me realize that I have a lot to learn and that I should be patient and not expect everything to come that fast.
“At that point, I had a year of more or less constant rise. I was just winning tournaments. Every time I would lose a game, I would just believe that I could strike back immediately. I realized now that I was just delusional. I thought that was a lot better than what I was. That was probably why I was having such good results because you’re so confident. But having a little bit of a reality check, I think, helped me later to actually understand the game a bit better.”
