King of the board

At 13, he won a national championship. At 17, he became India’s first Grandmaster. At 30, he won his first world championship. And, now at 37, this Chennai-born player once again has the world at his feet by becoming the undisputed world chess champion. M.S. Unnikrishnan on the master player of the game

The world champion with his prized trophy in Mexico City

Viswanathan Anand has once again become the World Chess Champion to prove unequivocally that he is the best in the sport. And this time, he has emerged as the undisputed king after slaying the finest players of the game in the world.

Mexico City has proved to be a happy hunting ground for Anand, as he regained the crown without a loss in the 14-round, eight-player contest. He won four games, and drew the rest to regain the title after a seven-year gap. The prize money of $390,000 (around Rs 1.5 crore) may not be huge by Anand’s standards, as he is reportedly worth over Rs 100 crore, but it’s not peanuts either. The cream of world chess was there in the Latin American city to give a shot at the unified title, but none could match Anand’s class.

Former and current world champions like Vladimir Kramnik, Veselin Topalov and Boris Gelfand were also in the fray, but Anand made light of their challenge to emerge victorious with nine points, which was one point clear of the second-placed Vladimir Kramnik of Russia and Boris Gelfand of Israel. This triumph has put Anand in the league of former world champion, the American recluse and genius Bobby Fischer, and Russian world champions Anatoly Karpov and Gary Kasparov.

"It feels nice to come through without a defeat in 14 rounds," Anand had remarked after his title triumph. He said he was lucky that he could triumph as younger players are fast catching up, and may pose serious threats in the coming years.

Anand playing the game with Hungary’s Grandmaster Peter Leko in Mexico City. — Photos by AP/PTI

Anand, who became the World No 1 in April this year after his title win at Linares, also cracked the coveted 2800 Elo points for the second time to emerge the numero uno. He raised his tally from 2792 to 2801 points to open up a 14-point lead over second-placed Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine. In April 2006, Anand had totalled 2803 points, but was placed second behind the then world champion Veselin Topalov.

He is expected to retain the world crown for a longer period as, according to the new format, the world title contest will henceforth be fought between the champion and the challenger over a fixed number of games. Dethroned champion Vladimir Kramnik holds a one-time right to challenge Anand in 2008, but Anand is unfazed by the prospect of meeting his challenger so early.

When Anand first won the world title, defeating Alexei Shirov of Spain at Tehran (Iran) in 2000, Kramnik had foisted himself as the world champion, almost unilaterally, following his victory over Kasparov over a 16-game duel.

Kramnik later defeated Peter Leko of Hungary in 2004 and Veselin Topalov in 2005 to become the first undisputed champion since 1993.

When Anand won the world chess title in Tehran, he was not as self-assured as he was this time around. At 37, Anand definitely is a wiser and much improved player who seems to have hit the peak of his career. He plays fast and puts his opponents on time trouble, and this strategy has been standing him in good stead. He went to Mexico City well prepared, with his eyes firmly set on the title. He had taken a two-month break to work out his game plan and strategy with his seconds, and tried out all possibilities and situations, permutations and combinations.

Such a thorough grounding helped him avoid any slip-up, be on his guard all the time and not get caught unawares by his equally fancied opponents. With brilliant tactical moves, he wriggled out of tricky situations and dominated the field right through the preliminary rounds.

The only hitch he encountered was against Alexader Grischuk of Russia in the penultimate round, but Anand sidestepped the pitfalls deftly to save a precious half point, to virtually ensure the title with one more round to go. The Indian maestro plotted his moves so astutely that he offered his opponents no chance to corner him. He applied the killer punch to live up to the image of a "smiling assassin". In the 14^th and final round, it took Anand just 20 moves in 30 minutes to force Peter Leko to sign a draw.

Polite to a fault, Anand and his petite wife Aruna make a perfect couple, but the chess wizard has sharpened his game so well now that it will take quite an effort for the pretenders to the throne to unseat him. His new-found killer instinct has helped him stay ahead of his peers, and breach the barriers which would have looked insurmountable for lesser mortals.

It is to Anand’s credit that he has not only brought India centrestage, but has also put Mexico City in the spotlight, after Bob Beamon had performed that impossible leap of over 8 metres in the high altitude jumping pit of the city 39 years ago. Anand’s triumph is also a triumph for the unified chess world as he has the distinction of becoming the undisputed world champion and asserting his supremacy.

When Anand first became the world champion seven years ago, the world chess body (FIDE) was a house divided with Gary Kasparov floating a rival association, and Anand’s title was treated as part of the world title, and not the whole. It took 15 years of efforts for the FIDE to mend fences and bring all the warring factions together to create a unified body.

Anand’s world title is a logical conclusion of his prodigious talent which was evident when he became the national sub-junior champion in 1983-84 at 13. He announced his arrival on the world stage when he emerged the world junior champion three years later.

Twenty years on, Anand has put himself in a different orbit. On the way to the top, he also made conquest of the Linares, Corus, Mainz and Dortmund crowns, and four Chess Oscars.

His title sweeps include not only the classical game (like in the World Championship), but also the rapid and advanced variety as well. He has won every title in the classical version and is perhaps the most successful rapid player ever and has earned the sobriquet of "Lightening Kid".

His success rate in rapid chess has been phenomenal and he surpassed himself by winning the World Rapid Championship for the 10^th time this year, with seven wins coming at Mainz (Germany) alone after he first played in the event at Frankfurt in 1994. He won a four-player event in 1997 ahead of Anatoly Karpov and then regained the title in 1998 beating Vladimir Kramnik. But his sweetest triumph was in 2000 when he beat Gary Kasparov, Kramnik and Leko with a round to spare in an eight-player field. And this when he had no chess legacy to boast of. He battled his way up to break the erstwhile Soviet Union’s monopoly in chess.

Winner of the first Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award, the highest sporting honour in India, Anand has been a role model and icon for a generation of sportspersons. That he had closed in on the world title was clearly evident when he figured among the top three players for the past ten years. Anand, who shuttles between his adopted home in Spain and Chennai, is like a cult figure in Spain where he is at par with the top shots of the country.