Carl Ja­cobs

The chess world is keen­ly an­tic­i­pat­ing the du­el next No­vem­ber be­tween 43-year-old World Cham­pi­on Viswanathan Anand and Mag­nus Carlsen, the 22-year-old chal­lenger from Nor­way.

But while the bat­tle for the supreme chess ti­tle is al­ways an en­gross­ing af­fair, this par­tic­u­lar en­counter will hold an in­ter­est be­yond what the enor­mous tal­ent of the two com­bat­ants will pro­duce over the chess­board. Let's call it The Age Fac­tor.

That most hu­mans suf­fer a de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in their fac­ul­ties as they get old­er is a fact of life. In terms of the world's great­est mind game, the ques­tion then seems ap­pro­pri­ate, at what age does a play­er, es­pe­cial­ly those in the grand­mas­ter class, be­gin to lose his edge, the sharp­ness that has brought him to the peak of his ca­reer?

In oth­er words, will the Age Fac­tor play any part in the com­ing clash be­tween Anand and Carlsen with a 21-year gap be­tween them?

Not un­ex­pect­ed­ly, this top­ic has oc­cu­pied a con­sid­er­able part of con­ver­sa­tions among GMs. Dur­ing the re­cent Lon­don Can­di­dates Tour­na­ment, it be­came the sub­ject of a dis­cus­sion be­tween GM Nigel Short and IM Lawrence Trent who won­dered about the ex­is­tence of a "peak" age in chess abil­i­ty.

Short said he was in­trigued by the de­bate, es­pe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing two points; first, that the world cham­pi­on has been per­form­ing rel­a­tive­ly poor­ly in the past two years and, sec­ond­ly, the hype that sur­rounds Carlsen, the high­est rat­ed play­er in the world. Be­cause of this, he won­dered whether youth is a ma­jor as­set in chess.

Con­sid­er­ing that the young Nor­we­gian star, "the over­whelm­ing cen­tre of mod­ern chess at­ten­tion," is 100 rat­ing points high­er than the In­di­an cham­pi­on, rat­ed sev­enth, "many be­lieve that chess abil­i­ty may re­sem­ble a bell curve when con­trol­ling for age," says Short, "and the young are bet­ter fit to sit at the board for six or sev­en hours at a time."

But will the bat­tle at Chen­nai in No­vem­ber re­al­ly serve to set­tle this re­cur­ring ques­tion? Anand, it seems, does not think so. Fac­ing the ex­pect­ed crit­i­cism over his present form, Anand point­ed out that his vic­to­ry over Gelfand last year, bag­ging his fifth world ti­tle, showed he was still the king of chess. Though the game is not phys­i­cal­ly de­mand­ing, he not­ed that sta­mi­na and men­tal agili­ty play a key role.

The cham­pi­on's lifestyle, be­ing able to re­lax, take long walks and "hit" the gym reg­u­lar­ly al­so helps him to clear the way for the mag­num opus of chess.

In­di­an GM RB Ramesh points out that it's the mo­ti­vat­ing fac­tor that plays a vi­tal role as you age in chess. "It's not so much about phys­i­cal or men­tal fit­ness, but the ac­tu­al task of egging your­self on to achieve glo­ry," he says.

"When you are young in the chess cir­cuit, you have var­i­ous tar­gets in mind–beat this par­tic­u­lar play­er, achieve a cer­tain rank­ing, etc. But as you keep con­quer­ing all the big tour­na­ments, like Anand has, mo­ti­vat­ing your­self to do the same thing again and again is the key."

With­out deny­ing the Age Fac­tor, DR is in­clined to agree. The his­to­ry of the sport, in fact, pro­vides a num­ber of im­pres­sive refu­ta­tions of the "old man" syn­drome; play­ers, in­clud­ing cham­pi­ons, who have dom­i­nat­ed the high­er ech­e­lons of the game well in­to their mid­dle age.

Per­haps the most re­mark­able among them is the Russ­ian leg­end Vic­tor Ko­rch­noi who re­tired last year at the age of 81, end­ing a mag­nif­i­cent ca­reer that in­clud­ed three chal­lenges for the world ti­tle against Ana­toly Kar­pov, four So­vi­et cham­pi­onships and vic­to­ries over most of the play­ers who at some time were the best in the world. Ko­rch­noi, in fact, is re­gard­ed as the strongest GM nev­er to have won the world ti­tle.

But we re­al­ly don't have to scan the in­ter­na­tion­al chess are­na to cast doubt on the Age Fac­tor, to find strong play­ers who have de­fied the so-called "rav­ages of time."

Home-grown stal­warts such as Mario Mer­ritt, Ce­cil Lee, Frank Sears, An­drew Bowles and John Raphael have main­tained their promi­nent place in the T&T chess world over two decades and more, even against the chal­lenge of a ris­ing gen­er­a­tion of young and tal­ent­ed play­ers.

The fact is, they have not lost their zest for the game, and that qual­i­ty, per­haps, is the es­sen­tial an­ti­dote to the Age Fac­tor.

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