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Chessdom chess players Search Main menu Skip to primary content Skip to secondary content Home Post navigation ← Older posts Gelfand – Anand 2012, the participants Posted on April 5, 2012 by chessdom The World Chess Championship 2012 between the defending World Champion Viswanathan Anand and the challenger from the Candidates Matches Boris Gelfand will take place in May 2012 in Moscow, Russia. This is the biography of Viswanathan Anand , here is the biography of Boris Gelfand Anand – Gelfand 2012 live games here Viswanathan ANAND (India) Born 11 December 1969 in Madras FIDE World Champion 2000, World Champion since 2007 Rating on 1 January 2012 – 2799 (peak rating: 2817) Early years . Anand was born on 11 December 1969 to a well-to-do family in Madras. His parents belonged to the highest caste in Hinduism: his father, Viswanathan, was an engineer, and later General Manager of the Southern Railway; his mother, Susheela, was a housewife. The future champion was given the name Anand at birth. Indian people do not have family names, so in his own country he was known to everyone by his first name. But when Anand began to travel to Europe in the mid-1980s, he was “renamed”: his first name was taken as his surname, and people began to call him by his father’s first name, and then shortened it to “Vishy”. This form of address might have seemed crude and inappropriate to Anand, but he took a completely calm attitude towards it, and it soon became established in chess circles. Anand learnt to play chess at the age of 6, at the instigation of his mother, and within a year he started going to the local chess club, named after Mikhail Tal. From his first acquaintance with the play of the eighth world champion he fell in love with Tal’s chess, and to this day Anand names him as his favourite chess player, along with Fischer. It very soon became clear that the Indian had a lot in common with his idol – the same talent for combinations and eagerness to take the initiative, and also incredibly fast thinking. Vishy did not waste time – he would spend not two hours but just 25–30 minutes on a serious game… His parents strictly “rationed” Anand’s interest in chess. He only played if things were going well for him at school – they once stopped him playing for a whole month. Vishy never had a chess tutor: the main sources of his knowledge were books and magazines. He worked everything out for himself! First successes . The breakthrough in Anand’s results occurred in 1983. He won the Indian Under-16 (9 wins out of 9) and Under-19 championships successively – and won a place in the country’s adult championships. After finishing in fourth place in these, the 14-year-old talent won a place in the Indian national team! Then, accompanied by his mum, he set off for his first Olympiad in Salonika. Anand played very successfully on board 4, with a result of +6=3-2, and his game against Hergott ended up in Chess Informant. In 1985 Anand became an International Master, the youngest Asian player to hold this title. In 1986 he won the Indian adult championship, and in 1987, at his fourth attempt, he won the Under-20 World Championship, winning 10 out of 13. In “faraway Baguio” he beat Ivanchuk by half a point in an incredible race, and also defeated him in a head-to-head game. The other contenders were left trailing far behind. For this achievement the 18-year-old “chess prince” became a Grandmaster, the youngest at that time. But according to Anand, the main thing for him was that at last people noticed him: “I didn’t need to waste loads of time playing in ordinary Indian tournaments where I could pump up my rating and wait for an invitation to some good tournaments…” He was immediately invited to a strong open competition in Lugano, and also to Brussels, where the young chess prince found himself acting as one of the commentators on the World Cup tournament. While at this great chess forum, the young and sociable Anand managed to renew his acquaintance not only with the entire international elite but also, far more importantly for him at that point, with the organisers of the biggest international tournaments… Vishy immediately received an invitation to his first big round-robin tournament – in Wijk aan Zee! It was after this tournament, in which Anand shared 1st-4th places with Nikolic, Ribli and Sax, people started to refer to him as one of the leaders of the new generation. And he himself felt that he had taken a qualitative leap forward in his chess development. Challenger 1. In the middle of 1990 Anand’s rating went above 2600 for the first time, and as he set off for the inter-zonal match in Manila he was already one of the favourites. And he succeeded in justifying his supporters’ expectations! After a “bumpy” start Vishy finished the tournament in hurricane style – 3.5 out of 4, becoming a challenger at 19 years of age! India was delighted and made every effort to get his 1/8 final match against Dreyev played in Madras. His rival was considered more experienced and stronger, but on the outside Vishy coped fairly easily with the pressure. His won the first game, and after a defeat in the third he achieved a hat trick and finished the match early, winning 4.5:1.5. Immediately after this, Anand started his first Linares tournament. The Indian began with two victories – over Kamsky and Karpov – but then suffered one misfortune after another. After losing in devastating style to Ivanchuk with white, Anand fell to the lower half of the table… On seeing this game, Kasparov started talking about Vishy’s “glass jaw”: he’s a striking and talented player but he hasn’t learnt to “roll with the punches”. In addition, when the experts discussed Anand’s style, they noted that he had two shortcomings: the lack of a “school”, which led to a not very convincing way of approaching the game, and being too hurried when taking important decisions. Of course, he wasn’t spending 30 minutes on a game as he had in his youth, but at times he was clearly hurrying, making second-class moves – and thereby spoiling games that he had played very well… But in his quarter final match with Karpov, who before the start had looked like the favourite, Anand managed to improve his play. Mikhail Gurevich helped him to eliminate many of his shortcomings and taught him to work seriously on his openings without losing the inherent lightness of his game. And the ex-champion felt the full force of the new Vishy. This match was probably a breakthrough for the future Anand. “At the beginning I was annoyed by the toss,” Vishy recalls. “But later I started to stick to the view that you can’t become a champion without meeting your most powerful rivals. You simply have to beat everyone you meet on the way!” In the majority of games the Indian held the initiative, but his lack of match experience told. Anand did not win the third and fifth games, and instead the rivals exchanged blows in the fourth and sixth. In the seventh, Vishy attempted to “squeeze out” a victory, but instead he managed only to squeeze himself out. In the deciding eighth game Karpov proved to be fresher and bolder. It has to be said that defeat in this match did not crush Anand. On the contrary, he drew the right conclusions, and this, he says, had an effect as early as the next cycle… Challenger 2 . The fact that Vishy was in good shape was shown by his two victories over Kasparov – at the tournaments in Tilburg and Reggio Emilia. In Italy the Indian for the first time left the whole international elite, including both world champions, trailing in his wake. In 1992 he shared victory at the Euwe (Amsterdam) and Alekhine (Moscow) memorials. But the landmark event for him was the “friendly” match against Vassily Ivanchuk in Linares. They were both (with Gelfand) considered the heirs of the two “Ks”, but which of them would come out in front? Before the match in Linares Vassily’s shares were rated a little higher, but afterwards Anand’s “rate” went up… It...