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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.
Viswanathan 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.
Viswanathan Anand's recent tournament successes include the prestigious Corus chess
tournament in years 2003 and 2004 and Dortmund in 2004. He has won the
annually held Monaco Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess Championships in
years 1994, 1997, 2003 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.
Viswanathan Anand's game collection, My Best Games of Chess, was published in the year
1998 and was updated in 2001.
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 to Ruslan Ponomariov in 2002.
He became shared second in the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005
(together with Peter Svidler) with 8.5 points out of 14 games, lagging
1.5 points behind the winner, Veselin Topalov.
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 with Kasparov
being the only missing player. Anand is still deservedly considered to
be the world's finest Rapid Chess player.He has consistently won almost
all rapid events defeating many top players and his main achievements in
this Category are at : Corsica , Leon , Amber events where he dominated
almost all elite players .
Chess titles
Awards
Play Through Over 2000 Viswanathan Anand Games