Thursday 13 June 2013
Anand began learning the game at the age of six from his mother and was soon christened "the lightning kid" for his quick, intuitive moves. At 14, he won the National Subjuniors Championship and four years later the World Junior Championship in the Philippines. In 1988, he became the first Indian to be awarded the grandmaster title. He reached the top echelons of the world of chess by qualifying as a candidate for the World Championship cycle in 1990, the second Asian to achieve this feat. Although in the next few years Anand moved up the World Championship ladder and notched easy -victories at matches and tournaments, his success was punctuated with a few disappointments.
Anand first challenged Kasparov, the reigning world champion, in 1995 at the Professional Chess Association world championship after defeating American grandmaster Gata Kamsky. He also challenged Anatoly Karpov in the Fédération Internationale des Échecs world championship at Lausanne in 1997. In 1998, he won the prestigious Linares Super Tourney, popularly known as the "Wimbledon of chess". For his extraordinary performances in 1997, he was awarded the Chess Oscar, scoring 3047 points ahead of Kasparov. He was awarded the Arjuna Award in 1985 and was also the first recipient of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award (1991/92). Acknowledging his outstanding achievements, the Indian government conferred the Padma Bhushan upon him in 2000.
Anand authored My Best Games of Chess , a collection of accounts of his best 40 games. Written for chess aficionados, it won him the British Chess Federation's Book of the Year Award in 1998.
