Nisipeanu exudes confidence

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, NOV. 25. Till August last year, Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu was almost a non-entity. But his stupendous run in the last edition of the World chess championship at Las Vegas, where this long- haired Romanian Grandmaster found his way to the semifinals before going down in the tie-break games to the eventual champion, Alexander Khalifman, gave him some identity.

With this as his claim to fame, Nisipeanu found the going difficult at the circuit. Reality has caught up with him and his performances during the past year are ``nothing to talk about.''

Nisipeanu was among the 39 players who arrived in the Capital by the early hours of Friday. GMs Jeroen Piket (the Netherlands), Joel Lautier (France), Alexie Shirov (Spain), van Wely were among those who have checked into Hyatt Regency Hotel, the venue of the championship. Here to improve upon his previous showing in the World championship which opens on Sunday, Nisipeanu gives an impression of being a happy-go-lucky man who loves the game ``too much'' to look for any other reason to be motivated.

Though Nisipeanu is seeded directly into the second round, where he is due to face Kiril Georgiev of Bulgaria only on November 30, he says ``it is good idea to be here a week before.'' He added that until three days back, he did not know the name of his rival. ``I should win,'' said Nisipeanu striking a confident note.

With an Elo rating of 2592, Nisipeanu does not have any great results in the limited opportunity he gets to play in. He has remained Romanian champion since 1996. In 1997, he won the Hugarian National title as well.

At Las Vegas, Nisipeanu surprised everyone including himself by getting the better of stronger players like Z. Azmaiparashvili in the second round and Ukrainian genius Vassily Ivanchuk in the pre-quarterfinals and Spain's Alexie Shirov in the quarterfinals. Last year, Nisipeanu was supported by GM Istratescu but this time, he has come all alone.

``Like everyone else, I was a bit nervous when I started and gained confidence when I began to win. You need luck to do well but then, I am not saying that all that I did was due to luck, '' says the Romanian who loves watching television. ``I wish I could do something about it,'' says Nisipeanu with a big smile as he talks about watching football and tennis on the small screen.

He favours this accelarated format of the World Championship as compared to the long-drawn four-year cycle followed previously. ``Everything is fast these days so no one can wait for a challenger (to the champion) to be found in four years. So in a way, its good.''

Nisipeanu agreed that the top players of the world like Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik not playing in the championship does take away from the tournament but was quick to add ``it is not necessary that the World champion should also be the strongest. Whosoever wins, should be treated like a champion.''

Unlike Nisipeanu, Piket is a man of few words. The soft-spoken Dutch from Leiden caught the attention of the chess fraternity when he proved his enormous potential by taking a quantum leap in the ratings in 1994. He claimed the title at Dortmund, beating Anatoly Karpov on the way.

But it was his victory over Kasparov in the two-game final played over internet this February that the 31-year-old Piket feels was memorable.

``How I wish I could see his face,'' said Piket, adding in a lighter vein that the victory was perhaps made possible due to the fact that he could not see Kasparov. It may be recalled that in the first round of this online tournament, Kasparov had faced Dibyendu Barua.

Before coming here, Piket played all 14 matches in the Olympiad at Istanbul. Losing the last two rounds left Piket a little dissatisfied, but now he is looking forward to the championship to get underway.

``In a format like this, the first round is very important. There is no point in looking ahead. I take it match by match,'' said Piket who faces Hernandez in the first round and the winner of Nevednichy-Labib match in the second.

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Section  : Sport
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