Happy Birthday Vishy Anand! (Photo: Amruta Mokal)

Vishy Anand was born December 11, 1969 in Mayiladuthurai, Tamil Nadu, but grew up in Madras, today's Chennai, where he lives with his family.

Anand became India's first grandmaster in 1988 and from 2000 to 2002 he was Fide World Champion. In 2007 he became undisputed World Champion and successfully defended the title against Vladimir Kramnik (2008), Veselin Topalov (2010), and Boris Gelfand (2012) until he lost it in 2013 to Magnus Carlsen.

Anand is the only World Champion who won the World Champion title in three different formats: in a knock-out tournament when he became Fide World Champion 2000, in a round-robin when he won the undisputed World Champion 2007 and in the World Championship match against Vladimir Kramnik 2008.

With a rating of 2779 Anand is currently number 8 on the Fide World Ranking List, on the live-rating list his good 1.5/2 start at the London Chess Classic brought him a virtual rating of 2785 and made him number 7 in the world, ahead of Sergey Karjakin who currently is number 8 on the live-list and Hikaru Nakamura, who is number 9.

Anand is also a ChessBase author. After winning the title in 2007 Anand visited the ChessBase studio in Hamburg to record two DVDs on which he talks about his career and shows a few of his many brilliant wins, e.g. the following: