India’s chess wizard and the world’s No. 1 player. He won a number of top tournaments in 2007. He also won the first Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award instituted in 1990-91. He was also the first Indian to win the junior world chess championship.
He is one of the most outstanding sports personalities of the world. The departure of Gary Kasparov from active chess championship offered Anand an opportunity to become World’s No.1. He has crossed the ELO rating of 2800.
Lately he won the world chess championship in Mexico in September 07. He is the first Asian to be the undisputed champion and only the second from outside Eastern Europe in the last 60 years (the other was the American Bobby Fischer who held the title from 1972 to 1975).
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Under the rules of the World Chess Federation, the organisers of the Championship, he played a match in 2008 against the Russian Vladimir Kramnik, the previous Champion. Technically, Anand’s victory in Mexico City is his second world title. In 2000, he won the Federation Championship Tournament held in Teheran and New Delhi.
At that time, the title was split and many people recognised Kramnik as the legitimate champion. Anand was the only undefeated player in Mexico. He is one of the four players in history to break the 2800 mark on the FIDE rating list. He played for the Corus chess tournament in Jan. 2008 at WIJK AAN ZEE (Holland).
Anand Vishwanathan has been slipping in his overall performance and stood bracketed-4-5 in the world Championship held in November 2009. He continues to be an icon and a role model for a large number of Indians. He defeated world no I, twice in late 2009.