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By
14 he was the “Boy Wonder” in Indian chess and his assets,
lightning speed, ability to see and read the game far ahead besides
on-board intuition saw him emerge as the Youngest Indian National
Champion at age of 16
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 great score of 9/9 in 1983 at the age of fourteen
In
1987 he became the First Asian to win the World Junior Championship
at Baguio City in the Philippines. The same year he became the first
Indian to earn the coveted Grandmaster title
The
pinnacle of his career was achieved on December 24, 2000 when Anand
became the 15th World Chess Champion in Teheran. Anand won the championship
by remaining unbeaten. By winning the title, Anand becomes the First
Asian to win the title ending many years of Soviet Domination of
the Ancient Indian game
"Vishy",
as he is sometimes called by his friends, 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).
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'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, 2005 and 2006. 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 year (and he did this twice --
in 1997 and 2005). He is the first player to have achieved victories
in each of the three big chess supertournaments: Corus (1998, 2003,
2004, 2006), Linares (1998), Dortmund (1996, 2000, 2004).
Anand
enjoys playing different varieties of chess. He especially enjoys
the advanced chess, wherein computers are at hand for calculations
and database searches. Anand has won three editions of the Leon
Advanced Chess tournament in Spain (1999,2000 and 2001).
Anand
has won the Chess Oscar in 1997, 1998, 2003, and 2004. 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
Listing
all of Anand’s wins is indeed an arduous task, but some of
the biggest successes include, the Corus Super GM tournament at
Wijk Aan Zee (1988, 1998, 2003 and 2004), Dortmund (1996, 2000 and
2004), Melody Amber tournament (1994 & 1997 and 2003), Reggio
Emilia (1991), Groningen (1997), Linares (1998), the Credit Suisse
Masters (1997), Dos Hermanas (1997), Torneo de Madrid (1998), Tilburg
(1998), Merida (2001), Corsica Masters (2000, 2001, 2002 ,2003 and
2004) and Chess Classic of Mainz (2000, 2001, 2002 , 2003 and 2004),
World Cup (2002 and 2000) and Eurotel Trophy (2002)
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