Viswanathan Anand

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Viswanathan Anand

Full name Viswanathan Anand
Country Flag of India India
Born December 11, 1969 (age 37)
Madras, India
Title Grandmaster
World Champion 2000-2002 (FIDE)
Rating 2786
(No. 1 on the April 2007 FIDE ratings list)[1]
Peak rating 2803 (April 2006)

Viswanathan Anand (IPA: ʋiɕ'ʋəˌnɑˌt̪ʰən ɑnˌənd̪) (born December 11, 1969 in Chennai (then called Madras), India) is an Indian chess grandmaster and former FIDE world champion. Anand is one of only four players in history to break the 2800 mark on the FIDE rating list and he has been among the top three ranked players in classical time control chess in the world continuously since 1997.[2]

In the April 2007 FIDE Elo rating list, Anand was ranked first in the world for the first time.[3] He is only the sixth person to head the rating list since its inception in 1970, the other five being Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, Kramnik and Topalov.

Contents

[edit] Chess 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 International Master Title at the age of fifteen, in 1984. At the age of sixteen he became the National Champion and won that title two more times. He played games at blitz speed, earning him the nickname "Lightning Kid" ("Blitz chess" is known in India as "Lightning chess"). 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.

"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 either, and he continued to play games at blitz speed. In 1991, he made the quarter finals of the FIDE Candidates Tournament, before losing narrowly to Anatoly Karpov.[4]

Anand qualified for the Professional Chess Association World Chess Championship final by winning the candidates matches against Michael Adams and Gata Kamsky.[5] In 1995, he played a title match 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 using a splendid sacrifice on the queen side, but then lost four of the next five. He lost the match 10.5 - 7.5.

Anand won three consecutive Advanced Chess tournaments in Leon, Spain after Garry Kasparov introduced this form of chess in 1998, and is widely recognized as the world's best Advanced Chess player, where humans may consult a computer to aid in their calculation of variations.

Anand's recent tournament successes include the prestigious Corus chess tournament in 2006 (tied with Veselin Topalov), Dortmund in 2004, and Linares in 2007. He has won the annually held Monaco Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess Championships in years 1994, 1997, 2003, 2005 and 2006. He is the only player to have won five titles of the Corus chess tournament. He is also the only player to win the blind and rapid sections of the Amber tournament in the same year (and he did this twice -- in 1997 and 2005). He is the first player to have achieved victories in each of the three big chess supertournaments: Corus (1998, 2003, 2004, 2006), Linares (1998, 2007), Dortmund (1996, 2000, 2004).

Anand has won the Chess Oscar in 1997, 1998, 2003, and 2004. The Chess Oscar is awarded to the year's best player according to a world-wide poll of leading chess critics, writers, and journalists conducted by the Russian chess magazine 64.

His game collection, My Best Games of Chess, was published in the year 1998 and was updated in 2001.

In March 2007, Anand won the Linares chess tournament and it was widely believed that he would be ranked world No.1 in the FIDE Elo rating list for April 2007. However, Anand was placed No.2 in the initial list released because the Linares result was not included. FIDE subsequently announced that the Linares results would be included after all,[6] making Anand number one in the April 2007 list.[7]

[edit] World Chess Champion

After several near misses, Anand finally won the FIDE World Chess Championship in 2000 after defeating Alexei Shirov 3.5 - 0.5 in the final match held at Teheran, thereby becoming the first Indian to win that title. He lost the title when Ruslan Ponomariov won the FIDE knockout tournament in 2002.

He tied for second with Peter Svidler in the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005 with 8.5 points out of 14 games, lagging 1.5 points behind the winner, Veselin Topalov.

[edit] World Rapid Chess Champion

In October 2003, the governing body of chess, FIDE, organized a rapid time control tournament in Cap d'Agde and billed it as the World Rapid Chess Championship. Each player had 25 minutes at the start of the game, with an additional 10 seconds after each move. Anand won this event ahead of ten of the other top twelve players in the world, beating Kramnik in the final. Anand is widely regarded as the world's finest Rapid Chess player. He has won countless major rapid chess events defeating all top players in the process. His main recent titles in this category are at: Corsica (6 yrs in a row from 1999-2005), Mainz (7 yrs in a row from 2000-2006), Leon 2005, Eurotel 2002, Fujitsu Giants 2002 and the Melody Amber (5 times -- and he won the rapid portion of Melody Amber 7 times). In the Melody Amber 2007, Anand did not lose a single game in the rapid section, and scored 8.5/11, two more than the runners-up. His performance in the rapid section was 2939. [8] In virtually all classical (regular time control) games that Anand plays, he has more time left than his opponent at the end of the game. In fact, he took advantage of the rule allowing players in time trouble to use dashes instead of the move notation during the last four minutes only once, in the game Anand - Svidler at the MTel Masters 2006 [9].

[edit] Chess titles

  • 1983 National Sub-Junior Chess Champion - age 14
  • 1984 International Master - age 15
  • 1985 Indian National Champion - age 16
  • 1987 World Junior Chess Champion, Grandmaster
  • 2000 FIDE World Chess Champion
  • 2003 FIDE World Rapid Chess Champion

[edit] Awards

Anand has received many awards.

[edit] Further reading

  • Viswanathan Anand, My Best Games of Chess (Gambit, 2001 (new edition))

[edit] Sample game

Image:chess_zhor_26.png
Image:chess_zver_26.png
a8 b8 c8 d8 e8 f8 g8 h8
a7 b7 c7 d7 e7 f7 g7 h7
a6 b6 c6 d6 e6 f6 g6 h6
a5 b5 c5 d5 e5 f5 g5 h5
a4 b4 c4 d4 e4 f4 g4 h4
a3 b3 c3 d3 e3 f3 g3 h3
a2 b2 c2 d2 e2 f2 g2 h2
a1 b1 c1 d1 e1 f1 g1 h1
Image:chess_zver_26.png
Image:chess_zhor_26.png
In this position after move 36 in the 2000 FIDE World Championship game between Viswanathan Anand and Viktor Bologan, Anand (White), in an apparently worse position, finds an intuitive sacrifice that leads to a winning attack.

On his way to winning the FIDE World Chess Championship in 2000, Anand defeated Grandmaster Viktor Bologan with the white pieces. Here are the moves in algebraic chess notation (Analysis by Grandmaster Ljubomir Ftacnik):

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Be7 6. Re1 b5 7. Bb3 d6 8. c3 O-O 9. h3 Nb8 10. d4 Nbd7 11. Nbd2 Bb7 12. Bc2 Re8 13. Nf1 Bf8 14. Ng3 c5 15. d5 c4 16. Bg5 Qc7 17. Nf5 Kh8 18. g4 Ng8 19. Qd2 Nc5 20. Be3 Bc8 21. Ng3 Rb8 22. Kg2 a5 23. a3 Ne7 24. Rh1 Ng6 25. g5! b4!? Anand has an excellent kingside attack, so Bologan seeks counterplay with the sacrifice of a pawn. 26. axb4 axb4 27. cxb4 Na6 28. Ra4 Nf4+ 29. Bxf4 exf4 30. Nh5 Qb6 31. Qxf4 Nxb4 32. Bb1 Rb7 33. Ra3 Rc7 34. Rd1 Na6 35. Nd4 Qxb2 36. Rg3 c3 (see diagram) 37. Nf6!! Re5 If 37...gxf6, 38. gxf6 h6 39. Rg1! Qd2! 40. Qh4 leaves white with an irresistible initiative. 38. g6! fxg6 39. Nd7 Be7 40. Nxe5 dxe5 41. Qf7 h6 42. Qe8+ 1-0 [10]

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Alexander Khalifman		 FIDE World Chess Champion
2000–2002		 Succeeded by
Ruslan Ponomariov
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