Viswanathan Anand the Indian chess grandmaster was born in a Tamil family on 11 December 1969. Anand’s father is a retired General Manager in southern railways, and mother Susila was a housewife. Viswanathan Anand is the youngest sibling in his family. He has an older brother and a sister. Anand started playing chess at the age of 6, which he learned from her mother. Anand completed his intermediate education from Don Bosco Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Egmore, Chennai and has graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Commerce from Loyola College, Chennai.
Anand’s rise Indian chess world was sudden. He got a national level identity when he won the National sub-junior championship with a score of 9/9 at the age of 14. Later, In 1984 Viswanathan became the youngest player to become the international master at the age of 15 by winning the Asian Junior Chess championship. In 1985 by winning the Asian chess championship twice in a row, Anand became the national chess champion at the age of 16. He won the title w more times by playing chess at bitz speed. In 1987, he became the first Indian to with the World junior chess championship, and In 1988 he became India’s first chess grandmaster at the age of 18, by winning the Shakti Finance International Chess Tournament held in Coimbatore, India. He was also awarded Padma Shri at the age of 18.
Anand became the 1st chess grandmaster of India in 1988. Anand has been a 4-time world champion, in 2007 he became the world champion by a score of 9 out of 14, Anand won the championship by remaining the only undefeated player throughout the tournament with 4 wins and 10 draws. Since then Anand defended the championship for three years, 2008 against Vladimir Kramnik, In 2010 he defended the title against Veselin Topalov and 2012 against Boris Gelfand. But later he lost to Magnus Carlsen in 2013 and again to Carlsen in 2014. Viswanathan Anand then won the World Rapid Chess Championship in 2003 and 2017.
In April 2006 Anand became 4th player in history to pass 2800 to mark on the FIDE (FIDE is a French acronym for Fédération Internationale des Échecs which means World Chess Federation) rating list. He occupied the 1st position for 21 months, the 6th longest on record. Anand also became the first person to receive the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in 1991-92. He is also the first sportsperson to get the second highest civilian award, Padma Vibhushan in 2007.
Other hobbies of Anand are reading, swimming, and listening to music. Anand is a well-liked figure in the chess world, its proven by the fact when his competitors, Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, and Magnus Carlsen aided him for World Chess Championship 2010, of which the former two of them were rival for the World Championship. Anand has his own game published, My Best Games of Chess, in the year 1998 and was updated in 2001.
