I always considered him to be a colossal talent, one of the greatest in the whole history of chess. Each champion has had some sort of speciality, and his is creating counterplay in any position out of absolutely nowhere. He's got an amazing ability to constantly stretch himself so that even in some kind of Exchange Slav he nevertheless manages to attack something and create something. He also plays absolutely brilliantly with knights, even better than Morozevich – if his knights start to jump around, particularly towards the king, then that's that, it's impossible to play against and they'll just sweep away everything in their path. I noticed it's better to get rid of them when you're playing against him. - Vladimir Kramnik

I think that namely in terms of play Anand is in no way weaker than Kasparov, but he's simply a little lazy, relaxed and only focuses on matches. In the last 5-6 years he's made a qualitative leap that's made it possible to consider him one of the great chess players. Perhaps it doesn't look like that to observers, but when you play against him you sense what a great range he has. - Vladimir Kramnik