Viswanathan Anand

Viswanathan Anand, popularly known as 'Vishy, the Tiger from Madras' is the first Asian to win the title of World Chess Championship. He was born on December 11, 1969 in Chennai to Krishnamurthy Viswanathan and Susheela. His father is a retired general manager, Southern Railways.

He started playing chess at the age of 6. He learned the game from his mother because his brothers did not have the patience to play chess with him. His parents encouraged him and used to take him to the Tal Chess club. Young Anand had an exceptional memory power. He became in 1984 the youngest Indian to earn the title of IM at the age of fifteen. At the age of sixteen he became the Indian Champion. In 1987, he became the first Indian to win the World Junior Championship. At the age of eighteen, he became India's first grandmaster. His prowess at quick-play chess earned him the nickname "The Lightning Kid."

Anand contested a match with Garry Kasparov for the PCA World Chess Championship in 1995, but lost. Three years later he won a knockout tournament in Groningen to qualify to play for the FIDE title against Anatoli Karpov, but was defeated in rapid tie-breaks.

In 1998, he won the strongest Linares tournament ever, with an average rating of 2752, making it a category 21 event. In 2000, he beat Alexey Shirov to become the FIDE World Chess Champion. He is a four-time winner of the Chess Oscar award and the 2003 FIDE World Rapid Chess Champion. In spring of 2006, following a record-extending fifth victory at Corus Wijk aan Zee (2006), Anand became only the fourth player ever to crack the 2800-Elo mark in FIDE ratings, following Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, and Veselin Topalov.

2007 was a year of two memorable milestones for Anand. First, he finally achieved his longtime goal of becoming world #1 in ratings. After winning the Linares tournament - Linares-Morelia (2007), he overtook Topalov to claim first place on FIDE's April list. His second great success came at the FIDE World Championship Tournament (2007). Leading throughout the event, Anand captured the unified World Chess Champion title with an undefeated +4 score. A few months later, he again won the Morelia-Linares (2008) outright for the third time in his career.

In October 2008, Anand successfully retained his World Champion crown by beating challenger Vladimir Kramnik in a twelve-game match by 6.5-4.5, winning three, losing one and drawing seven (see Anand-Kramnik World Championship Match (2008)).