World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik gave a QA session

In the run-up to the chess24 Legends of Chess, 14th World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik gave a Question and Answer session where he talked about his matches against Garry Kasparov, Vishy Anand and Peter Leko, his experience working with young Indian chess prodigies, how his style changed over the course of his career, and much more. It’s a must-watch, in case you missed it, and now we’ve added transcripts of some of the highlights from the over one-hour show.

Vladimir Kramnik was interviewed by Canadian GM Pascal Charbonneau, with questions posed by chess24 premium members. You can rewatch the full show below:

On what chess can teach

For me personally I’ve been blessed. I have a lot of gratitude to chess and to my father, who showed me chess, as I mentioned, without any bad intentions! He never thought I’m going to be a professional chess player. It was just a part of culture, I was just 5 or 6, and he couldn’t do anything better than that, because since then it’s been my passion, it’s been my profession, but also my hobby – my passion and a very important part of my life, which I believe helped me in a way, created me as a personality as I am, like it or not. It’s been a very important part of my life.

I think chess, I can say, there is no harm studying, and lots of positive aspects, especially for the kids to start to play chess. One of the aspects is that nowadays the world is changing quite significantly, I’m also partly involved in certain AI projects… and I can clearly see many experts are already telling that the world is going to be very different in the next maybe 10-20 years. I fully agree with it, it’s true, I really believe so, and actually the ability of critical thinking, strategical thinking will be important, even more important than nowadays – so called soft skills.

See also:

• ‌Kramnik on seeing Carlsen was the next Federer
• AlphaZero, Vladimir Kramnik and reinventing chess
• Kramnik on retirement and life after chess
• Vladimir Kramnik’s chess24 profile