Vishy Anand Fans

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Viswanathan "Vishy" Anand (born 11 December 1969) is an Indian chess grandmaster and a former five-time World Chess Champion. He became the first grandmaster from India in 1988, and is one of the few players to have surpassed an Elo rating of 2800, a feat he first achieved in 2006. In 2022, he was elected the deputy president of FIDE.

Anand defeated Alexei Shirov in a six-game match to win the 2000 FIDE World Chess Championship, a title he held until 2002. He became the undisputed world champion in 2007, and defended his title against Vladimir Kramnik in 2008, Veselin Topalov in 2010, and Boris Gelfand in 2012. In 2013, he lost the title to challenger Magnus Carlsen, and he lost a rematch to Carlsen in 2014 after winning the 2014 Candidates Tournament.

In April 2006, Anand became the fourth player in history to pass the 2800 Elo mark on the FIDE rating list, after Kramnik, Topalov, and Garry Kasparov. He occupied the number one position for 21 months, the sixth-longest period on record.

Known for his rapid playing speed as a child, Anand earned the sobriquet "Lightning Kid" during his early career in the 1980s. He has since developed into a universal player, and many consider him the greatest rapid chess player of his generation. He won the FIDE World Rapid Chess Championship in 2003 and 2017, the World Blitz Cup in 2000, and numerous other top-level rapid and blitz events.

Anand was 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.

Early life

Viswanathan Anand was born on 11 December 1969 in Mayiladuthurai, Tamil Nadu, India, and moved to Chennai, Tamil Nadu, where he grew up. His father, Krishnamurthy Viswanathan, was a general manager of Southern Railways who had studied in Jamalpur, Bihar; and his mother, Sushila, was a housewife, chess aficionado, and an influential socialite.

Anand is the youngest of three children. He is 11 years younger than his sister, and 13 years younger than his brother. His brother, Shivakumar, is a manager at Crompton Greaves in India. His sister, Anuradha, is a professor at the University of Michigan.

Anand started learning chess from age six from his mother, but he learned the intricacies of the game in Manila, where he lived with his parents from 1978 through the 1980s while his father was contracted as a consultant by the Philippine National Railways.

Anand was educated at Don Bosco Matriculation Higher Secondary School,^[23] Egmore, Chennai, and has a Bachelor of Commerce from Loyola College, Chennai.

Personal life

Anand married Aruna in 1996 and has a son, born on 9 April 2011, named in the traditional patronymic way Anand Akhil.

Anand is Hindu and stated that he visits temples to enjoy the tranquility and joy they symbolize. He has credited his daily prayers with helping him achieve a "heightened state of mind" that helps him focus better when playing chess.

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. On 24 December 2010, he was the guest of honour on the grounds of Gujarat University, where 20,486 players created a new world record of simultaneous chess play at a single venue.

His hobbies are reading, swimming, and listening to music.

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

Anand was the only sportsperson invited to the dinner Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hosted for US President Barack Obama on 7 November 2010.

Anand was denied an honorary doctorate from University of Hyderabad because of confusion over his citizenship status; India's Minister of Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal later apologised 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". According to The Hindu, Anand finally declined to accept the doctorate.

On 26 May 2015, Anand's mother died at age 79. On 15 April 2021, Anand's father died at age 92.

Early chess career

Anand's rise in the Indian chess world was meteoric. National success came early for him when he won the sub-junior championship with a score of 9/9 points in 1983, at age 14. In 1984 Anand won the Asian Junior Championship in Coimbatore, earning an International Master (IM) norm in the process. Soon afterward, he participated in the 26th Chess Olympiad, in Thessaloniki, where he made his debut on the Indian national team. There, Anand scored 7½ points in 11 games, gaining his second IM norm. In 1985 he became the youngest Indian to achieve the title of International Master, at age 15, by winning the Asian Junior Championship for the second year in a row, this time in Hong Kong. At age 16, he became the national chess champion. He 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 age 18, he became India's first grandmaster by winning the Shakti Finance International chess tournament held in Coimbatore, India. One of his notable successes in this tournament was his win against Russian grandmaster Efim Geller.^[42] He was awarded Padma Shri at age 18.

Championship cycle, Anand qualified for his first Candidates Tournament, winning his first match but narrowly losing his quarterfinal match to 1990 runner-up Anatoly Karpov.^[43]

In 1994–95, Anand and Gata Kamsky dominated the qualifying cycles for the rival FIDE and PCA world championships. In the FIDE cycle, Anand lost his quarterfinal match to Kamsky after leading early.^[44] Kamsky lost the 1996 FIDE championship match to 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 Kamsky in the Candidates final.^[45] In 1995, he played the PCA World Chess Championship against Kasparov at New York City's World Trade Center. After an opening run of eight draws (a record for the opening of a world championship match until 21 November 2018), 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, FIDE granted Karpov, the reigning champion, direct seeding into the final against the winner of the seven-round single-elimination Candidates tournament. The psychological and physical advantage Karpov gained from this decision caused significant controversy, leading to Kramnik's withdrawal from the tournament. Anand won the tournament, defeating Adams in the final, and immediately faced Karpov for the championship. Despite this disadvantage for Anand, which he described as being "brought in a coffin" to play Karpov,^[31] the regular match ended 3–3, which led to a rapid playoff, which Karpov won 2–0. Karpov thus remained the FIDE champion.

Other results

Anand has won the Mainz Chess Classic, a Category 21 Championship, a record 11 times. In 2008, he defeated Carlsen en route to his 11th title in that event.

Anand is the first player to have won five titles of the Corus chess tournament. He is the first player to have won each of the Big Three supertournaments at the time: Corus (1989, 1998, 2003, 2004, 2006), Linares (1998, 2007, 2008), and Dortmund (1996, 2000, 2004).

Anand has a stellar record at the annual Melody Amber Tournament (2 separate and unique Blindfold and Rapid Chess supertournaments played): he has 5 overall prizes (winning in 1994, 1997, 2003, 2005, and 2006), and has the most "rapidplay" titles, winning 9 times. He is also the only player to win the blind and rapid sections of the tournament in the same year (twice, in 1997 and 2005).

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

Anand's collection My Best Games of Chess was published in 1998 and updated in 2001. His individual tournament successes include the Corus chess tournament in 2006 (tied with Topalov), Dortmund in 2004, and Linares in 2007 and 2008. In 2007 he won the Grenkeleasing Rapid championship for the tenth time, defeating Levon Aronian. Just a few days before, Aronian had defeated Anand in the Chess960 final.

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. But Anand was No. 2 on the initial list released because the Linares result was not included. FIDE subsequently announced that Linares would be included, pushing Anand to number one in the April 2007 list.

World Chess Championships

1995

In 1993, the newly formed Professional Chess Association (PCA) held a 54-player, 11-round Swiss-style qualifying tournament in Groningen on 19–30 December, an equivalent of FIDE's Interzonal. Anand scored 7½/11 to finish tied for first and secure a berth in the 1994 Candidates' Tournament. In the single-elimination tournament, Anand handily dispatched Adams and Oleg Romanishin in the quarterfinal and semifinal matches, held in New York City and Linares. Facing Kamsky in a 12-game final match held at Las Palmas, Anand lost Game 1 on time in a winning position but recovered with wins in Game 3, 9, and 11 to secure a 6½–4½ victory and a match against reigning champion Kasparov for the world chess championship. It was the first Candidates' Tournament victory of Anand's career.

The 20-game championship match was held from 10 September to 16 October 1995 on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center in New York City. The match started with a then-record eight consecutive draws before Anand broke open the match in Game 9, pressing and eventually breaking through Kasparov's Sicilian Defense with a powerful exchange sacrifice. But Anand scored just half a point in the next five games, losing twice to Kasparov's Sicilian Dragon defence, and eventually conceded a 10½–7½ loss. Afterwards, Kasparov commented on Anand's psychological approach to the match:

Anand lost the match in five games, Games 10 to 14. I lost many games in a row to Karpov in the first match I played with him, but I don't think he was that much better. It was a great experience for me. Anand wasn't paying enough attention with his team to the fact that he was playing the World Championship. He has never played such a strong opponent for such a long event. You can't compare his match with Kamsky in April to the match we have played here... I'm criticizing the strategy. He could have played without a fixed strategy and adjusted during the match. The chess preparation was excellent, but there was some psychological advice not appropriate.

World Chess Championship Match 1995

	Rating	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	Total
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/35px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/45px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png 2x" style="border:1px solid #eaecf0;vertical-align:middle;" class="thumbborder" alt="" width="23" height="15"> Garry Kasparov (Russia)	2795	½	½	½	½	½	½	½	½	0	1	1	½	1	1	½	½	½	½	10½
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/41/Flag_of_India.svg/35px-Flag_of_India.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/41/Flag_of_India.svg/45px-Flag_of_India.svg.png 2x" style="border:1px solid #eaecf0;vertical-align:middle;" class="thumbborder" alt="" width="23" height="15"> Viswanathan Anand (India)	2725	½	½	½	½	½	½	½	½	1	0	0	½	0	0	½	½	½	½	7½

1998[edit]

In a radical departure from previous years, the 1998 world championship was a 100-player knockout tournament, with each round consisting of two-game matches and ties resolved by rapid and blitz games. Controversially, Karpov, the defending champion, was seeded directly into the final, held just three days after the conclusion of the three-week tournament. This format gave Karpov a significant advantage in rest time and preparation; Kasparov and Kramnik both declined to participate as a result. The latter explained his absence bluntly: "Is it fair to expect Sampras to only play one match and defend his Wimbledon title?"

As a result of Kasparov's withdrawal, Anand entered the tournament in Groningen, Netherlands as the #1 seed. After dispatching future FIDE champion Alexander Khalifman in the third round, he scored quick victories over Zoltán Almási, Alexei Shirov, and Boris Gelfand to advance. In the final against ninth-seeded Michael Adams, held on 30 December, both players drew their first four games. A visibly tired Anand, having played 21 games in 23 days, eventually prevailed in a sudden-death blitz game to secure a 3–2 victory.

Immediately after defeating Adams, Anand arranged a flight with his team to the International Olympic Committee museum in Lausanne, Switzerland to play Karpov in a six-game match for the FIDE world title. With just four hours of pre-match preparation, Anand lost Game 1 after Karpov surprised him with a bold queen sacrifice on the 31st move. But he won Game 2 in 42 moves from a disadvantaged position after accepting a sharp exchange sacrifice and outplaying Karpov in the resulting endgame. After losing Game 4, Anand entered the final game of the match needing a win to force the match into a playoff. Playing white, he opened with the Trompowsky Attack. Karpov defended well until 28...Qd8?, a critical mistake that lost him a piece and the game.

In the first rapid playoff game, Anand secured a significant advantage on the board before a calculation mistake (40...a4?) cost him the game. Karpov then won the second game with black to seal a 5−3 victory and retain the FIDE title. After the match, Anand reiterated his concerns with the unfairness of the tournament format.

It was almost as if I had been asked to run a 100-metre sprint after completing a cross-country marathon... Karpov waited for the corpse of his challenger to be delivered in a coffin. If anybody else other than Karpov wins, it's a world championship. Otherwise, it's not.

Karpov, meanwhile, questioned Anand's temperament and remarked that he "doesn't have the character" to win big games. For his part, Kasparov dismissed the match as between "a tired player and an old player".