Viswanathan Anand

Viswanathan Anand's signature

Viswanathan Anand (Tamil: விஸ்வநாதன் ஆனந்த்; born 11 December 1969) is an Indian chess Grandmaster and the current World Chess Champion. Anand has won the World Chess Championship five times^[ (2000, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012), and has been the undisputed World Champion since 2007. Anand was the FIDE World Rapid Chess Champion in 2003, and is widely considered the strongest rapid player of his generation.^[

Anand became India's first grandmaster in 1988.^[ He was also the first recipient of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in 1991–92, India's highest sporting honour. In 2007, he was awarded India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, making him the first sportsperson to receive the award in Indian history. Anand has won the Chess Oscar six times (1997, 1998, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008).

He held the FIDE World Chess Championship from 2000 to 2002, at a time when the world title was split. He became the undisputed World Champion in 2007 and defended his title against Vladimir Kramnik in 2008. He then successfully defended his title in the World Chess Championship 2010 against Veselin Topalov and in the World Chess Championship 2012^[6] against Boris Gelfand. As the reigning champion, he will face Magnus Carlsen, the winner of the Candidates Tournament for the World Chess Championship 2013.

Anand is one of six players in history to break the 2800 mark on the FIDE rating list, and in April 2007 at the age of 37, he became the world number one for the first time. He was at the top of the world rankings five out of six times, from April 2007 to July 2008, holding the number-one ranking for a total of 15 months. In October 2008, he dropped out of the world top three ranking for the first time since July 1996. Anand regained the world number one ranking on the November 2010 list, but had to concede the top spot back to Carlsen in July 2011./

Viswanathan Anand was born on December 11, 1969 in Mayiladuthurai, a town in Tamil Nadu. Shortly thereafter, his family moved to Chennai (formerly Madras), where he grew up.^[1] His father, Viswanathan Iyer, is a retired General Manager of Southern Railways, and his mother Susheela, housewife and chess/film/club aficionado and an influential socialite. He has an elder brother, Shivakumar who is a manager at Crompton Greaves in India and an elder sister Anuradha who is a professor at the University of Michigan.^[7][8]

Anand is 11 years younger than his sister and 13 years younger than his brother.

He was taught to play chess by his mother and a close family friend named Deepa Ramakrishnan. He described his start in chess thus:

I started when I was six. My mother taught me how to play. In fact, my mother used to do a lot for my chess. We moved to the Philippines shortly afterward. I joined the club in India and we moved to the Philippines for a year. And there they had a TV program that was on in the afternoon, one to two or something like that, when I was in school. So she would write down all the games that they showed and the puzzles, and in the evening we solved them together.

Of course my mother and her family used to play some chess, and she used to play with her younger brother, so she had some background in chess, but she never went to a club or anything like that.

So we solved all these puzzles and sent in our answers together. And they gave the prize of a book to the winner. And over the course of many months, I won so many prizes. At one point they just said take all the books you want, but don't send in any more entries.^[9]

Anand was educated at Don Bosco Matriculation Higher Secondary School,^[10] Egmore, Chennai and holds a degree of Bachelor of Commerce from Loyola College, Chennai.^[11]

Personal life

In August 2010, Anand joined the Board of Directors of Olympic Gold Quest, a foundation for promoting and supporting India's elite sportspersons and potential young talent.^[12][13][14] On 24 December 2010 Anand was guest of honour on the grounds of Gujarat university, Ahmedabad, where 20,486 players created a new world record of simultaneous chess play at single venue.^[15]

His hobbies are reading, swimming, and listening to music. He is married to Aruna Anand and has a son born on 9 April 2011.^[16] Anand's son is named Akhil and in the Tamil tradition will be called "Anand Akhil" (no surname). Briefly, Anand lived with his wife Aruna in Spain.^[17] The family is now based in Chennai, India.^[18][19]

Anand has been regarded as an unassuming person with a reputation for refraining from political and psychological ploys and instead focusing on his game.^[20] This has made him a well-liked figure throughout the chess world for two decades, evidenced by the fact that Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, and Magnus Carlsen, of whom the former two were rivals for the World Championship throughout Anand's career, each aided him in preparing for the World Chess Championship 2010.^[21][22] Anand is sometimes known as the "Tiger of Madras".^[23]

Anand was the only sportsperson to have been invited for the dinner hosted by the Indian PM Manmohan Singh for US President Barack Obama on 7 November 2010.^[24]

Honorary doctorate

Anand was denied an honorary doctorate from University of Hyderabad because of confusion over his citizenship status; however, later Kapil Sibal, India's Minister of Human Resource Development apologized and said "There is no issue on the matter as Anand has agreed to accept the degree at a convenient time depending on his availability".^[25] According to The Hindu, Anand finally declined to accept the doctorate.^[26]

Chess career

Early career

Anand's rise in the Indian chess world was meteoric. National level success came early for him when he won the National Sub-Junior Chess Championship with a score of 9/9 in 1983 at the age of fourteen. He became the youngest Indian to win the title of International Master at the age of fifteen, in 1984. At the age of sixteen he became the national chess champion and won that title two more times. He played games at blitz speed. In 1987, he became the first Indian to win the World Junior Chess Championship. In 1988, at the age of eighteen, he became India's first Grandmaster by winning Shakti Finance International chess tournament held in Coimbatore, India. He was awarded Padma Shri at the age of 18.

"Vishy", as he is sometimes called by his friends, burst upon the upper echelons of the chess scene in the early 1990s, winning such tournaments as Reggio Emilia 1991 (ahead of Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov). Playing at such a high level did not slow him down, and he continued to play games at blitz speed.

In the World Chess Championship 1993 cycle Anand qualified for his first Candidates Tournament, winning his first match but narrowly losing his quarter-final match to Anatoly Karpov.

In 1994–95 Anand and Gata Kamsky dominated the qualifying cycles for the rival FIDE and PCA world championships. In the FIDE cycle (FIDE World Chess Championship 1996), Anand lost his quarter-final match to Kamsky after leading early.^[28] Kamsky went on to lose the 1996 FIDE championship match against Karpov.

In the 1995 PCA cycle, Anand won matches against Oleg Romanishin and Michael Adams without a loss, then avenged his FIDE loss by defeating Gata Kamsky in the Candidates final.^[] In 1995, he played the PCA World Chess Championship 1995 against Kasparov in New York City's World Trade Center. After an opening run of eight draws (a record for the opening of a world championship match), Anand won game nine with a powerful exchange sacrifice, but then lost four of the next five. He lost the match 10½–7½.

In the 1998 FIDE cycle, the reigning champion Karpov was granted direct seeding by FIDE into the final against the winner of the seven-round single elimination Candidates tournament. The psychological and physical advantage gained by Karpov from this decision caused significant controversy, leading to the withdrawal of future World Champion Vladimir Kramnik from the candidates tournament. Anand won the candidates tournament, defeating Michael Adams in the final, and immediately faced a well-rested Karpov for the championship. Despite this tremendous disadvantage for Anand, which he described as being "brought in a coffin" to play Karpov. The regular match ended 3–3, which lead to a rapid playoff, which Karpov won 2–0. Karpov thus remained the FIDE champion.

World Chess Champion// World Champion 2007

In September 2007 Anand became World Champion again by winning that year's FIDE World Championship Tournament held in Mexico City. He won the double round-robin tournament with a final score of 9 out of 14 points, a full point ahead of joint second place finishers Vladimir Kramnik and Boris Gelfand.

In 2000, when Anand won the FIDE World Championship, there was also the rival "Classical" World Championship, held by Kramnik. By 2007, the world championship had been reunified, so Anand's victory in Mexico City made him undisputed World Chess Champion. He became the first undisputed champion to win the title in a tournament, rather than in matchplay, since Mikhail Botvinnik in 1948.

In October 2007, Anand said he liked the double round robin championship format (as used in the 2007 championship in Mexico City), and that the right of Kramnik to automatically challenge for the title was "ridiculous".^]   World Champion 2008