Author: Sune Larsson
Date: 11:15:09 10/30/00
There is a very interesting article about Kramnik to be found at the german ChessBase site. The author is Herrn Schumacher and he rapidly killed my illusion of Kramnik being a solid machine type of person! This Kramnik played in Bundesliga when he was 17 years old. And was already at that time pointed out by Kasparov, as a possible coming worldchampion. In the article it is said that Kramnik had (has?) quite a vivid preference for vodka. And that he tried out if it was possible to win games in the german first league, after having spent the whole night drinking vodka with no sleep. Yes, Kramnik could... Anand is reported having stated that if Vlady stops drinking he will be unbeatable! If I understand the article correctly, there was a day when Kramnik sat down in front of the chessboard and experienced a total standstill of the mind. No ideas, nothing. After that it seems he has slowed down quite a bit with the fluid stuff. And as preparation for the Kasparov match also lost a significant amount of weight. Another illusion seems to be that Vlady "only" could play a sort of technical, positional chess and was very vulnarable in tactics. That man entered the stage with hunger and determination, that's for sure. Sune
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.