Viswanathan Anand is the 15th chess world champion in the tradition which
began with Wilhelm Steinitz. He won this title at the world championship
tournament in Mexico in 2007 and thereafter successfully defended it several
times, in his 2008 match in Bonn against Vladimir Kramnik, in the 2010 match
in Sofia against Veselin Topalov and in Moscow in 2012 in his match against
Boris Gelfand. In his home match in 2013 in Chennai Anand lost his title as
world champion to Magnus Carlsen. In the subsequent candidates tournament
Anand qualified as challenger and in 2014 in Sochi there was a re-run of the
WCh match of 2013, though this time the indications were reversed. And
Anand was unable to win back his title. The start of Anand’s great career in
chess came at a turbulent time in the history of the World Chess Federation
(FIDE). In 1993 Nigel Short and Garry Kasparov had played their match for
the world chess crown outwith the aegis of FIDE. The World Chess
Federation did not recognise this world championship and then organised its
own world championships in parallel. So, from 1993 to 2006 there were in
chess two rival world championships and also two qualification systems.
Viswanathan Anand was born on the 11th of December 1969 in
Mayiladuthurai, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Indian names work
differently from European ones. His given or first name is “Anand”. His second
name is “Viswanathan”. In this case we are talking about a patronymic
(father’s name) where he is named after his father Krishnamurthy
Viswanathan and not a family name (surname). In many countries in Asia the
surname is given first, followed by the first name. Anand was one of the first
players from Asia to be successful in European tournaments. In ignorance of
the customs applying to names in Asia, European chess journalists thought
the new star in the chess firmament had a first name “Viswanathan”, and a
surname “Anand” and because the first of these names appeared so
complicated soon simply called him “Vishy” Anand. Anand grew up as the
youngest of three siblings. His sister Anuradha is eleven years older than he
is, and his brother Shivakumar 13 years older. Anand learned chess from his
mother Sushila at the age of six. At that point the family lived in Manila, since
Anand’s father had a contract as an adviser to the Philippine National
Railways. In the course of the world championship match between Karpov
and Korchnoi in 1978 the Philippines were gripped by a great enthusiasm for
chess: Anand regularly watched a chess programme on Philippine television
and solved chess puzzles. His mother took him to the local chess club where
the adults soon learned to fear him.
In the middle of the 1980s the family returned to India and then lived in
Chennai. There Anand went to the “Don Bosco Matriculation Higher
Secondary School”. After that he passed a bachelor’s degree in economics at
Loyola College. Anand’s rise to the peak of world chess was meteoric. In 1983
at 14 he won the Indian Sub-Junior championships. In 1984 he became the
Asian Junior Chess Champion. In the same year he became the youngest
Indian ever to be included in the national team for the Chess Olympiad. At 15,
moreover, Anand was the youngest Indian to receive from FIDE the title of
International Master after winning the Asian Junior Chess Championship for
the second time in 1985. At 16 Anand won the Indian national championship.
He would later repeat this success twice. In 1987 Anand was the first Indian to
win the World Junior Chess Championship. And in 1988 Anand also became
the youngest Indian grandmaster of all time. In his games Anand amazed his
opponents and the spectators with the incredible speed with which he found
his moves and executed them at the board. In 1989 Anand received his first
invitation to the tournament in Wijk aan Zee and won it at his first attempt. For
a long time. Anand’s five tournament victories made him the record holder in
Wijk aan Zee, till in 2019 he was replaced by Magnus Carlsen (six wins). In
1990 Anand, as the result of a shared third place at the Interzonal
Tournament in Manila, qualified for the candidates matches, but was
eliminated in the quarter-finals by Karpov. In 1992 there was a sensational
tournament success in Reggio Emilia, where he left trailing in his wake the
whole of the world’s elite, including Kasparov and Karpov. Then at the latest
Anand had established himself in the circle of the world’s best players.
Anand now collected various tournament victories, was invited to all the major
tournaments and qualified in 1994 for both qualification cycles for the world
championship, both that organised by FIDE the one by Kasparov’s and
Short’s organisation, the Professional Chess Association (PCA). In the FIDE
qualifications he was eliminated in the semi-final by Gata Kamsky. In the PCA
qualifications he won all his matches and became the challenger to Garry
Kasparov. At the WCh match in New York in 1995, however, he was defeated
by the defending champion. After Kirsan Iljumzhinov replaced the Filipino
Florencio Campomanes as FIDE president, he introduced KO tournaments as
the format for the FIDE world championships. In 1997 Anand qualified from
the first of these KO tournaments as the challenger of FIDE world champion
Karpov; he had to take part immediately afterwards in a short match against
the title holder and lost in the tiebreaks.
But at the KO world championship of 2000 Anand managed a victory in the
final against Alexei Shirov and thus became FIDE world champion. Since in
2007 Anand also won the reunification match for the world championship in an
all-play-all tournament and 2008 was able to successfully defend his title
against Kramnik in a match, he is the only chess world champion who has
managed to win the title in all three formats: KO, all-play-all tournament and
match. In the course of a career of over 30 years in professional chess Anand
has won close to 40 classical tournaments, close to 30 blitz, rapid chess and
other events and in addition more than ten matches, including three world
championship matches. Anand is married to Aruna, has a son, Achill, and,
when not travelling in Europe, lives in Chennai. For a while he owned a house
near Madrid as a European base. Now he still owns a flat in Bad Soden (near
Frankfurt) as a training base for his tournaments in Europe. For many years
he has based himself there for the Chess Classic in Frankfurt and Mainz and
for a long time has been a member of the Bundesliga team of OSG Baden-
Baden, record holders among German clubs. In India Anand is a widely
known popular hero who has been honoured with countless awards and
medals and who has unleashed a true chess boom in his native land with his
successes. Chess is now a popular sport and educational pursuit in India and
is part of the good upbringing of many children from the better classes.
Anand is a very witty and humorous person with whom to engage in
conversation; in addition to English and Tamil he speaks a whole series of
other languages, being fluent in Spanish, Russian and German. Before his
2008 world championship match against Vladimir Kramnik in Bonn Anand
recorded for ChessBase two DVDs in which he demonstrates and explains
some of his best games. His book “My Best Games of Chess” appeared in
1998. Amongst his grandmaster colleagues Anand is reckoned to be one of
the world’s best tacticians, but the 15th chess world champion also
demonstrates great defensive qualities. One of his outstanding abilities is to
recognise very early on upcoming difficulties and then to take the correct
decisions. On the 11th of December 2019 Viswanathan Anand celebrates his
50th birthday. But even at 50 he still remains one of the best players in the
world.
