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One player who has relied entirely on his natural talent throughout his career is Indian Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand (born 1969). While in the West we often refer to his name as "Anand," it is actually his first name, not his last. Anand learned to play chess from his mother, Surila, and at the age of six, he attended a chess club in Chennai for the first time. Just a year later, he defeated the then-strongest chess player in India, the relatively unknown Manuel Aaron.
Today, given the explosion of young chess talent emerging from India, it’s not hard to imagine such a young prodigy defeating a top player. Back then, it was unprecedented, and Anand’s rapid progress couldn’t be stopped. He quickly attained the titles of International Master (IM) and Grandmaster (GM), achieving the latter by winning the World Junior Championship in 1987, which secured his place as a grandmaster.
Anand was always known for his quick thinking, and in interviews, you can still see how rapidly he speaks. Early in his career, he was famous for his lightning-fast play. Even in classical time control games, he barely paused to think, yet was remarkably successful. Only much later in his career did he occasionally run into time trouble.
Although he was soon recognized as a formidable player, his final breakthrough came in the 1990s. In 1994, he came close to winning the FIDE World Championship. He defeated Artur Yusupov 4½-2½ in a Candidates match but lost to Gata Kamsky in a tiebreak after their duel ended 4-4. Competing under the PCA in 1995, he faced Kamsky again, this time winning 6½-4½, but ultimately lost the World Championship match to Garry Kasparov with a score of 10½-7½.
In late 1997, Anand won the knockout Candidates Tournament for the FIDE World Championship but lost to Anatoly Karpov in 1998 in their title match, which ended 3-3 and was decided in Karpov's favor in the tiebreak. Finally, in 2000, Anand reached his peak form. In another knockout tournament organized by FIDE, he defeated Latvian Grandmaster Alexei Shirov in the final match for the World Championship, held in New Delhi and Tehran. This victory marked his first world championship title.
In 2005, FIDE unexpectedly replaced the knockout format with a double round-robin tournament featuring eight players. The championship, held in San Luis, Argentina, was won by Veselin Topalov (see my video, UbM 196). Anand finished second and thereby lost his FIDE title.
The year 2007 proved to be a turning point. Apart from becoming the top player in the world rankings, Anand also won the successor tournament to San Luis, held in Mexico City—another double round-robin event. This made him the FIDE World Champion for the second time. In 2008, the famous “reunification match” between FIDE and PCA took place. Anand managed to defeat Vladimir Kramnik in Bonn, making him the undisputed World Champion as the PCA was subsequently dissolved.
We’ll discuss Anand’s career following this point in the next installment of this series.
In the position from the Aronian-Anand game in Mexico City, 2007, White attempted to complicate matters with 21. Nd5 exd5 22. cxd5. What precise response did Anand have ready in this position?
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