Mind Master Anand

What goes on inside the head of a world champion? Many champions have shared their analyses of chess games, and even some inside stories. But the mental struggles that surround the chess tournaments and championship matches has not been revealed to the general public to the same extent. So when former world champion Vishy Anande published a book on this topic, it felt like a must-read.

If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details.
Become a Patron!

What can you expect from this book?

Vishy Anand is a very fascinating person for a number of reasons. He was at the top level for more than three decades, and reigned as world champion from 2007 to 2013. Despite losing his title to Carlsen, he kept playing in top events and even managed to win the candidates tournament for a rematch against Carlsen in 2014. He has also won the prestigious Wijk an Zee tournament five times. When I visisted the tournament in 2020, I reflected on the fact that the first time Anand won the tournament (1989), most of the players in the field were not even born. That's longevity!

Mind Master is a book about Anand's life as a chess player. He shares stories about how he got into the game as a child, and how his skills have developed over the years. Most of all, he tells us about how he has experienced the many top-level tournaments and matches that he has played over the years, with particular focus on his world championship matches. He also writes about the many people in his life that have influenced his development, both at the board and outside chess.

What I found most fascinating about this book is how full of self-doubt Anand was at times. In particular around 2012, he describes how his confidence was at an all-time low. This seems quite unreasonable, considering the fact that he was the reigning world champion and objectively one of the strongest players in history. But we all get demons inside our heads from time to time, and Anand is no exception.

The book is well-written, and contains more than 20 pages full of high quality photographs from his life and chess career. Although the title indicates that the books contains important lessons, I think this aspect of the book is far too superficial to provide any real value. But the book is interesting regardless. It is always interesting to get the inside stories from the lives and careers of top players, and this books does precisely this. So if you want to learn more about Anand and his life, I recommend this book.

Who should read this book?

Mind Master is not a typical chess book. Although the book is (sort of) about chess, the chess content is very limited. It is a biography more than anything. So it is an easy read, and does not require any particular knowledge of the game.

About this book

Author:	Viswanathan Anand
Title:	Mind Master - Winning Lessons from a Champion's Life
Type of book:	Biography
Level:	Any

Comments

Popular reviews

Understanding middlegames

Have you ever found yourself unable to find a move in the middlegame? Of course you have. We all have. About ten years ago, this was a recurring problem for me, which led to a lot of frustration. My conclusion was that I needed to learn how understand middlegames. So what better way than to read a book with the title Understanding Chess Middlegames ? Sound like the perfect remedy, right? Ok, let's find out. If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from this book? I first read this book when I was just starting to study chess seriously. I bought it after reading a recommendation in an online forum. I would say this was ten years ago, but the book came out 2011, so it couldn't have been before that. Anyhow, my playing strength was probably around 1200 (I was unrated at the time) and I was having trouble choosing moves in non-tactical positions. Basically, I was playing without ...

Estimating playing strength

Have you ever felt like your chess rating doesn't represent your actual playing strength? Sometimes we want to be able to estimate playing strength based on individual games rather than rating (which changes more slowly). During the past few months, I've been taking a number of online courses and learning python for data analysis. In one of the courses, the final project allowed me to choose my own dataset. So surprise surprise! I chose something chess related. (Not really surprised, are you?) When we play games online, getting a computer evaluation is just a few clicks away. And a commonly used statistic is the average centipawn loss, or simply the average deviation from the computer's best move. Many of us tend to think that centipawn loss (CPL) is a good estimate of playing strength. And, of course, it gives some indication, but it's far from a perfect predictor. Fellow chess/statistics blogger Patrick Coulombe has investigated the correlation between rating and CPL ...

Blindfold chess

Are you impressed by people who can play chess without seeing the board? For the uninitiated, this is a very impressive display of skill. But it is a skill that can be learned, and you don’t need to be a grandmaster to achieve it. The trick is to start small, with few pieces on the board - or in a diagram. In this review, I will discuss a book that can help you on the way to becoming a blindfold chess wiz. If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from this book? A few years ago, my chess club arranged a small chess display in a local shopping centre. One of the things we did was having someone playing blindfolded against one of the spectators. People around the table were completely blown away by this, and many even asked if it was a trick. (It’s not!) Although blindfold chess seems amazing, even impossible, to some people, it is a skill that is very attainable. I would even c...

Lessons with a Grandmaster

If you had actual lessons with a grandmaster, would you be brave enough to publish the transcripts? Well, someone did. And that someone wrote about it in book form — three books, to be precise. In this review, I present my thoughts on the first book in the book series Lessons with a Grandmaster . If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from this book? Lessons with a GM is written in collaboration between Boris Gulko and Joel Sneed. Gulko is a grandmaster who emigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1980s. According to Wikipedia, he is the only player to win the Soviet as well as US Chess championships. Sneed is a professor of psychology at Queens College in New York as well as an amateur player. In essence, this book is a game collection. There are 25 games in the book, all played by Gulko. There are some real heavyweights among his opponents, such as Kasparov, Karpov,...

Master of strategy

During the past two years, I’ve been working on improving my strategic/positional play. In this process, I have read a number of books, and two books that have long been on my reading list are the strategy books by Johan Hellsten. So when the Swedish chess federation requested reviewers for two of these books, I didn’t hesitate. I am happy that I was given the opportunity to review these books, and hope this review can be of help to you as a reader. If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from these books? Johan Hellsten has created a name for himself as one of the leading experts of chess strategy in modern times. His series of strategy books ( Mastering Opening Strategy , Mastering Chess Strategy and Mastering Endgame Strategy ) have received glowing reviews from many parts of the chess world. So it feels good to finally dig into these nuggets. His endgame book is still in my boo...

Patzer's review

Search This Blog