Interesting interviews with two world chess champions and a finalist at the unofficial world poker championship (who happened to be chess master) have been published recently on the web.

Viswanathan Anand was interviewed by Susan Polgar right after his successful defending of the 2008 World Chess Championship. Post world championship Anand is impressed by today’s strong chess computers, but warns from drowning in the information. His life is a continuous effort to keep the balance between intensive practicing and taking time offs.

Anand was the first Indian to be awarded with a FIDE Grandmaster title and the first Indian World Chess Champion. Currently, there are about 17 Indian Grandmaster and dozens of Women Grandmasters, International Grandmasters and Fide Masters. In addition, India grabbed 17 chess championship titles of different levels since Anand, known as Vishy, won the World junior championship. Perhaps it has something to do with the inclusion of chess in the Indian school’s system:

“VA: We currently have a program called Mind Champion’s Academy… so something like 4,000-plus schools, with a total student population of more than 1.4 million. And of that, more than 70,000 have played in a competition this year. The nice thing is that we also reach out to non-traditional areas; not only the cities, but small towns and villages as well. So hopefully in five to ten years, we will start to see the effect of this as more and more people enter the chess world.”

The new chess queen, 2008 Women’s World Chess Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk gave her first interview after the winning to The Guardian and, once again, emphasized the role of chess in her life as opposed to her other occupations (now described by her as distractions). Unless she will be offered a main part in a good film (Kosteniuk played in the Russian movie “Blagoslovite zhenshinu” or “Bless the Woman” in English), she plans to concentrate on chess and motherhood.

Ylon Schwartz used to be a chess master with 2366 rating points. He also used to be a day care center worker, a special education assistant in a public school, a horserace bettor, but now he is aiming for the $900,000 prize offered to the winner of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event.

Talking with the New York Times, Schwartz spoke about the similarities between chess and poker. In both games, he says, players have to have good memory, outstanding strategy skill, and a sense for geometry:

“In chess, it is the shape and size of the board and positions of the pieces. In poker, it is the positions of the players betting on a hand and the number of chips they have.”

Nevertheless, he has to admit that chess and poker have at least one significant difference:

“Poker is a game of incomplete information…Chess is a game of complete information.”