Viswanathan Anand[11 Dec 1969]

Viswanathan Anand is also a SOUTH INDIAN…

He was born in Mayiladuthurai, Tamil Nadu, India.He is an Indian chess Grandmaster and the current World Chess Champion Anand has won the World Chess Championship five times (2000, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012), and has been the undisputed World Champion since 2007 Anand became India's first grandmaster in 1988 He was also the first recipient of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in 1991–92, India's highest sporting honor In 2007, he was awarded India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, making him the first sportsperson to receive the award in Indian history

Viswanathan (Vishy) Anand became the youngest Indian champion in 1984 at the age of sixteen In 1987, he became the first Asian Chess player to win the World Junior Championship at Baguio City in Philippines  First Indian in 1987, when he was nineteen years old In 1992, he won the very strong Reggio Emilia tournament ahead of the Russian masters Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov He was the runner up to Kasparov in World Championship final in 1995 He beat Kasparov in the rapid chess tournament in September 1996 and Karpov in June 1997 in Hamburg Rapid Chess
Anand won the FIDE World Chess Championship in 2000, at a time when the world title was split He became the undisputed World Chess Champion in 2007 and defended his title against Vladimir Kramnik in 2008 With this win, he became the first player in chess history to have won the World Championship in three different formats: Knockout, Tournament, and Match He will next defend his title in the World Chess Championship 2009 against the winner of the challenger match between Veselin Topalov and Gata Kamsky

Early life

Anand was born on 11 December 1969 in Mayiladuthurai, a small city in Tamil Nadu, India in a Tamil Brahmin family Shortly thereafter, his family moved to Chennai, (formerly Madras), where he grew up^[6] His father, Viswanathan Iyer, is a retired General Manager of Southern Railways, and his mother Susheela, housewife and chess/film/club aficionado and an influential socialite He has an elder brother, Shivakumar who is a manager at Crompton Greaves in India and an elder sister Anuradha who is a professor at the University of Michigan.Anand is 11 years younger than his sister and 13 years younger than his brother

He was taught to play chess by his mother and a close family friend named Deepa Ramakrishnan He described his start in chess in a conversation with Susan Polgar:

I started when I was six My mother taught me how to play In fact, my mother used to do a lot for my chess We moved to the Philippines shortly afterward I joined the club in India and we moved to the Philippines for a year And there they had a TV program that was on in the afternoon, one to two or something like that, when I was in school So she would write down all the games that they showed and the puzzles, and in the evening we solved them together

Of course my mother and her family used to play some chess, and she used to play with her younger brother, so she had some background in chess, but she never went to a club or anything like that

So we solved all these puzzles and sent in our answers together And they gave the prize of a book to the winner And over the course of many months, I won so many prizes At one point they just said take all the books you want, but don't send in any more entries

Anand was educated at Don Bosco Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Egmore, Chennai and holds a degree of Bachelor of Commerce from Loyola College, Chennai

Anand Won the following Chess titles

•1983 National Sub-Junior Chess Champion - at the age 14

•1984 International Master - at the age 15

•1985 Indian National Champion - at the age 16

•1987 World Junior Chess Champion, Grandmaster

•2000 FIDE World Chess Champion

•2003 FIDE World Rapid Chess Champion

Anand also received the following awards

•Anand has received many awards

•Arjuna award for Outstanding Indian Sportsman in Chess in 1985

•Padma Shri, National Citizens Award and Soviet Land Nehru Award in 1987

•The inaugural Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award, India's highest sporting honour in the year 1991-1992

•British Chess Federation 'Book of the Year' Award in 1998 for his book My Best Games of Chess

•Chess Oscar (1997, 1998, 2003 and 2004)