{"id":192,"date":"2018-01-21T11:45:26","date_gmt":"2018-01-21T11:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/?p=192"},"modified":"2022-12-29T07:09:18","modified_gmt":"2022-12-29T07:09:18","slug":"viswanathan-anand-the-tiger-of-madras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/?p=192","title":{"rendered":"Viswanathan Anand – the Tiger of Madras"},"content":{"rendered":"

Viswanathan \u201cVishy\u201d Anand<\/strong> (born 11 December 1969) is an Indian chess Grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, and the current World Rapid Chess Champion. He is called \u201dVishy<\/em>\u201d or the \u201dTiger of Madras<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

I first heard about Anand way back in 1983 while reading a Finnish chess magazine called \u201cSuomen shakki\u201d (the Finnish Chess). The magazine contained an article of world under-14 chess championship held in Kiljava, Finland. I the article a Finnish chess Fide Master Petri Kekki wrote about Anand: \u201cAnand has a perfect feeling for chess positions. This win of his took less than an hour.\u201d His talent shined already at the age of 13!<\/p>\n

Anand learned chess at the age of six from his mother and joined a chess club a year later. At his youth he was known as a very fast player. In 1985, he became the youngest Indian to achieve the title of International Master at the age of fifteen. In 1987, he became the first Indian to win the World Junior Chess Championship. In 1988, at the age of 18, he became India’s first Grandmaster by winning the Shakti Finance International chess tournament held in Coimbatore, India. His outright victory at Reggio Emilia 1991\/2, beating Kasparov in their individual game, marked his graduation into the top level of the chess elite.<\/p>\n

Anand won the FIDE World Chess Championship in 2000 for the first time after defeating Alexei Shirov 3\u00bd\u20130\u00bd in the final match held at Tehran, but failed to defend the title in 2002, losing in the semifinals to Vassily Ivanchuk. Anand was named the undisputed World champion in September 2007 after winning the FIDE World Championship Tournament in Mexico City. Anand convincingly defended the title against Kramnik in the World Chess Championship in 2008 winning the match with the score 7-5. In 2010 Anand defended the title in a match against Veselin Topalov winning with the score 6\u00bd-5\u00bd. In 2012 Anand again defended the title this time against Boris Gelfand winning with the score 8\u00bd-7\u00bd. In 2013 Anand lost the title in a match against Magnus Carlsen with the score of 3\u00bd-6\u00bd. In 2014 Anand challenged Carlsen for a title match in Sochi, Russia, but lost with the score of 4\u00bd-6\u00bd. Anand most recent success came in 2017 in the form of winning the FIDE World Rapid Chess Champion 2017 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

Anand\u2019s peak Elo rating was 2817 in March 2011. At the moment his Elo rating is 2767.<\/p>\n

Viswanathan Anand\u2019s style:<\/strong><\/p>\n

– A good description of Anand\u2019s style can be found in the book \u201cThe Mammoth Book of the World\u2019s Greatest Chess Games\u201d (Burgess, Nunn, and Emms): \u201cAnand is a very \u201ccomplete\u201d player. He obviously has enormous talent, an exceptional speed of thought and ferocious capacity of hard work. Though a natural attacking player, he is resourceful and resilient in defense and rarely gets flustered under pressure\u2026 Away from the board, he is modest, greatly popular and well respected by his peers.\u201d<\/p>\n

– The American chess Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan has this to say about Anand: \u201cAnand has phenomenal calculating abilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

– In an interview in 2014, the Russian chess Grandmaster Alexander Gritchuk said about Anand: \u201cI have to say that of all the players I\u2019ve played against Anand has personally struck me as the strongest, of course after Kasparov.\u201d<\/p>\n

– The Norwegian\/American chess Grandmaster Jonathan Tisdall tweeted this to me a couple of weeks ago: \u201cI remember seeing Vishy play as a teen – he was terrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Anand is one of the best opening theoreticians in the world (perhaps even the best) playing various openings both as white and as black. As white he slightly prefers 1.e4 instead of other opening moves.<\/p>\n

– Anand married his wife Aruna in 1996 and has a son, Akhil, born on 9 April 2011. His hobbies are reading, swimming, and listening to music.<\/p>\n

– Below are some links about Anand:<\/p>\n

– The Wikipedia article Viswanathan Anand<\/a>. Good as always!<\/p>\n

– The Chessgames.com article Chessgames.com<\/a>. Also very good!<\/p>\n

– The most comprehensive Anand\u2019s game collection known to me chess.db<\/a><\/p>\n

– One of my favorite Youtube-videos: Anand and his talent Anand and his talent<\/a>. The ooh and the applauds of the crowd are just wonderful. Everybody loves the Tiger of Madras!<\/p>\n

– And Anand\u2019s Twitter-account Anand Twitter-account<\/a><\/p>\n

This is all for January! A positive and negative feedback is equally appreciated.
\nContinuation follows in February. Have a great month of January!<\/p>\n

Kind regards,<\/p>\n

Mika Kaakinen
\nRiihim\u00e4ki
\nFinland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Viswanathan \u201cVishy\u201d Anand (born 11 December 1969) is an Indian chess Grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, and the current World Rapid Chess Champion. He is called \u201dVishy\u201d or the \u201dTiger of Madras\u201d. I first heard about Anand way back in 1983 while reading a Finnish chess magazine called \u201cSuomen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7Fvmv-36","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":256,"url":"https:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/?p=256","url_meta":{"origin":192,"position":0},"title":"Hikaru Nakamura – A Japanese-American Chess Grandmaster","date":"4 hein\u00e4kuun, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Hikaru Nakamura (born December 9, 1987) is an Japanese-American chess grandmaster. In 2003, at the age of 15 years and 79 days, Nakamura become the youngest American to earn the grandmaster title, breaking the record of Bobby Fischer by three months. He began playing chess prior to the age of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Kategoriassa "Chess"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":129,"url":"https:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/?p=129","url_meta":{"origin":192,"position":1},"title":"Yoshiharu Habu- A Shogi Legend","date":"2 joulukuun, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Yoshiharu Habu (\u7fbd\u751f \u5584\u6cbb Habu Yoshiharu, born September 27, 1970) is a professional Japanese chess (shogi) player and a chess FIDE Master. He is widely regarded as the greatest shogi player ever. Briefly about shogi According to researchers, the origin of chess and its regional variants was invented in Eastern\u2026","rel":"","context":"Kategoriassa "Shogi"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Habu-2-300x211.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":222,"url":"https:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/?p=222","url_meta":{"origin":192,"position":2},"title":"Fabiano Caruana – An Italian-American Chess Grandmaster","date":"27 maaliskuun, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Fabiano Luigi Caruana (born July 30, 1992) is an Italian-American chess grandmaster. He is called \u201dFabi\u201d by fans and chess public. Caruana became a grandmaster at the age of 14 years, 11 months and 20 days\u2014the youngest grandmaster in the history of both Italy and the United States at the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Kategoriassa "Chess"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":244,"url":"https:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/?p=244","url_meta":{"origin":192,"position":3},"title":"Lee Chang-ho – A Go Legend","date":"4 huhtikuun, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Lee Chang-ho (Korean:\uc774\ucc3d\ud638; born 29 July 1975 in Jeonju, North Jeolla) is a South Korean professional Go player of 9-dan rank. Briefly about Go Go was invented in ancient China more than 2,500 years ago is believed to be the oldest board game continuously played today (backgammon is also a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Kategoriassa "Go"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":342,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikakaakinen.fi\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}