While the crème de la crème of the chess world has gathered in Istanbul, two top players are missing: Magnus Carlsen and Vishy Anand. After last week's pictorial report about Carlsen's visit to New York, we have now also received a small report about Anand visiting Los Angeles. Like Carlsen, the Indian was involved in teaching. Ankit Gupta, President of Metropolitan Chess, Inc. sent us the following.

By Ankit Gupta | Photos by Tim Hanks & Chris Roberts

Metropolitan Chess, Inc. is a Los Angeles based chess organization. Metropolitan Chess was founded due to a lack of master level events in the greater Los Angeles area -- a gap we wanted to fill.

It is the goal of Metropolitan Chess, Inc. to promote and support the game of chess through community outreach and local, national, and international partnerships. We also aim to increase awareness of the educational value of chess, and ultimately provide greater opportunities for chess players of all strengths in which to learn, develop and grow. To this aim, we run regular Grandmaster and International Master norm tournaments, instructional seminars, group camps, and other chess related events. Interested players can visit the group's website at www.metrochessla.com.

Since there has been no reigning world champion that has been brought to the United States, in recent years, for the purpose of teaching or camp instruction, we wanted to try something outside of the box, and we felt that inviting World Champion Viswanathan Anand to our camp would therefore be a natural fit.

Anand, with his family, arrived in Los Angeles in early August. Prior to his camp commitments he stayed at Terranea Resort, one of Los Angeles' premier 5-star resorts, courtesy of Metropolitan Chess, Inc. for the purpose of a vacation and to allow him and his family to take in the sights that Los Angeles has to offer.

Then a week later he began his camp commitments, from August 9th to 13th, along with another 8 instructors, to the over 100 youth participants that had flocked to Los Angeles, some from afar, to meet the World Champion at the 2012 Metropolitan Chess Camp. The rating group of players ranged from as young as 5 years old and UNR to as high rated as 2400.

Some of his instructional sessions with GM Anand -- split over a morning and evening session -- to the higher rated camp groups lasted over 5 hours per day.

GM Robert Hess gives a video interview of the impression of attendees with GM Anand:

On the last day of the camp, Anand played some of the top performing participants at the camp in a 20-board simultaneous exhibition. The simul was somewhat unusual in that it had several 2300 FIDE rated players partaking, and an additional 'vote chess' board which allowed the online audience to participate.

The end result was 15 wins and 5 draws for the Indian Grandmaster. USCF Expert Nicky Korba, USCF Expert Karthik Ramachandran, USCF Master Elliott Neff, USCF Master Michael Brown, and the "Vote Chess" board held Anand to a draw.

This simul concluded the 5-day camp with World Champion Viswanathan Anand, whom Metropolitan Chess, Inc. is looking forward to again hosting in a future year.