Games - Viswanathan Anand

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Viswanathan Anand (IPA: ) (born December 11, 1969) is an Indian chess grandmaster. In the January 2006 FIDE Elo rating list, Anand has a rating of 2792, making him the number three in the world (after Veselin Topalov and the retired Garry Kasparov). Anand has been the strongest non-Soviet player since Bobby Fischer. He has been among the top three ranked players in classical chess in the world from 1994-2006 and the best rapid chess player in the world over much of that period.

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's 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, 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 lost in a tie-breaker to Anatoly Karpov in the quarter finals of the FIDE Knockout World Chess Championship.

Anand qualified for the Professional Chess Association World Chess Championship final by winning the candidates matches against Michael Adams and Gata Kamsky. 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 years 2003, 2004, 2006 (tied with Topalov), and Dortmund in 2004. He has won the annually held Monaco Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess Championships in years 1994, 1997, 2003 and 2005. 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 here (and he did this twice -- in 1997 and 2005).

Anand has won the Chess Oscar in 1997, 1998, 2003, and 2004. His four Oscars ties him with Kasparov for the most ever, one better than Fischer's three. 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.

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