Last weekend, as part of Brainwave, New York’s Rubin Museum of Art’s annual programme series that investigates how minds shape everyday experiences, chess champion Viswanathan Anand was in conversation with Duke University neuroscientist Dr Murali Doraiswamy. During the virtual session that was viewed by audiences from Moscow to Munich, Anand decoded his approach towards problems on the chessboard and how the solutions are applicable as much in life, while Dr Doraiswamy shed light on how the mind works, and its correlation with chess.

The session reminded this writer of why young Indians from the 1980s and ’90s took up chess, wowed by Anand’s wizardry while he decimated Grand Masters double his age. Chennai-based Anand recalled the early days of attending international junior chess tournaments, discussed the gender gap in chess, and how computers changed the game forever. “In my teens, the average age of the world’s top 10 players was 34-35 years. Now, it’s 22, and that includes outliers like me!” Anand later obliged Dr Doraiswamy by reliving a few epic combinations on the chessboard, including some that he played as a seven-year-old.