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Players
Viswanathan
Anand
Viswanathan Anand became the undisputed
world chess champion in 2007 and has since defended the
title twice in matches with Vladimir Kramnik in 2008 and
Veselin Topalov in 2010. In an age when more and more
players are playing professional chess, with infinitely more
sophisticated training resources and information available
to them, his achievement in defending the top spot from all
comers is as impressive as any of the successes of his
championship predecessors.
Vishy, as he is affectionately known to
colleagues and fans, is a hero in his native India, putting
him on a par with the nation’s top cricketers. From Tamil
Nadu, he was taught the game by his mother when he was six
and made rapid progress. His intuitive sight of the board
and super-fast speed on the move marked him out as a future
champion from his mid-teens. He became national champion in
1985, world junior champion in 1987 and a grandmaster in
1988.
Anand joined the chess super-elite in the
early 1990s and he qualified to play Garry Kasparov in the
PCA World Championship of 1995. Against all the odds he took
the lead in the match in the ninth game but eventually ran
out the loser by 7½-10½. Vishy pursued the FIDE version of
the title and had a near miss in 1999 against Anatoly Karpov
despite some unfortunate tournament scheduling which
required him to play the final match immediately after a
gruelling qualification event. In 2000 he won the FIDE
version of the title in Tehran and held it until 2002.
Following the reunification of the chess
world championship in 2006, Anand won a world championship
match-tournament in 2007 ahead of the reigning world
champion Vladimir Kramnik. Though the latter graciously
ceded all claim on the title to his rival, many purists
amongst pundits and fans longed to see the championship
decided under traditional matchplay rules. Their wish was
granted in 2008 when Anand and Kramnik played a match in
Bonn. The Indian made no mistake, defeating his Russian
opponent fair and square, and thus becoming only the second
world champion ever to have won the world title in both
tournament and match formats. Anand duly defended his title
in a match in 2010 against world number two Veselin Topalov,
on his opponent’s home ground in Bulgaria. His next
challenge is due in 2012, when it is hoped that the match
will be played in London.
Some past world champions have become
known to the general public for their off-board
eccentricities and personal rivalries but not so Viswanathan
Anand. Throughout his career he has shown himself to be the
perfect Indian gentleman who dispels attempts to provoke or
upset him with a disarming smile. Indeed, one of the major
difficulties facing his rivals is that he is simply
impossible to dislike! For example, when preparing for his
2010 world title match, his behind-the-scenes assistants
included the previous champion Vladimir Kramnik, whom Anand
had defeated two years earlier, and Magnus Carlsen. With the
charm of Capablanca, the industriousness of Botvinnik and
the natural talent of Kasparov, Anand will be a hard man to
beat in London in 2010. He lives in Spain with his wife
Aruna, who is also his manager.
Photo ©
http://www.europe-echecs.com
Magnus
Carlsen
Norwegian Magnus Carlsen is undoubtedly
the hottest property in world chess. He rounded off a superb
year in 2009 by winning the inaugural London Chess Classic
and moving to the top of the world rating list. In doing so
he bettered the achievements of Karpov and Kasparov, having
previously become the youngest player ever to reach the
illustrious 2800 Elo rating (and one of only five players in
the history of chess to do so).
Carlsen was marked out as a future world
champion from the moment he played his first international
event and he became a grandmaster at the age of 13 years,
four months, and 27 days. He achieved one of the outstanding
tournament results of all time at the Nanjing Pearl
Tournament in China in September 2009, where he scored a
superb 8/10, winning every game with the white pieces. Big
news in the same year was that Garry Kasparov was playing an
active role in training the teenage star from Norway. In
2010 Kasparov continued to offer him assistance from afar as
Carlsen added first prize at the highly prestigious Corus
tournament in Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands, to his burgeoning
list of successes.
At the beginning of his career Carlsen
was trained by GM Simen Agdestein at the Norwegian College
for top athletes NTG. Agdestein is the only GM to represent
a country at both chess and football.
Carlsen lives just outside Oslo with his
mother, father and two sisters who regularly travel the
world with him to tournaments. He is a keen football fan and
follows Real Madrid. He also enjoys playing football, skiing
and showed some promise at ski jumping before chess took
over.
Photo © Mark Huba:
http://www.londonchessclassic.com
Vladimir
Kramnik
Vladimir Kramnik, the 14th world champion
is a product of the Soviet Chess School having studied under
the ‘Patriarch of Soviet Chess’ Mikhail Botvinnik. He was
relatively unknown when, in 1992, at the behest of Garry
Kasparov, he was selected as reserve for the Russian team
that won gold at the Chess Olympiad in Manila. His selection
was controversial as he had not even secured the grandmaster
title but he took an individual gold with a score of 8½/9.
A meteoric rise followed and having
remained unbeaten in a world record 86 classical chess
games, Kramnik was clearly the man to challenge
long-standing incumbent Garry Kasparov. The match took place
in 2000 just down the road from Olympia at the Hammersmith
Studios and Kramnik won without losing a game to become the
only player to have defeated Kasparov in match play.
Kramnik
successfully defended his world title twice, in matches
against Peter Leko in 2004 at Brissago and against Veselin
Topalov at Elista in 2006.
Kramnik conceded his title to Anand at a
world championship tournament in Mexico in 2007 and he was
defeat by him in a match in Bonn in 2008. Since then, he has
returned to form, winning the powerful Dortmund tournament
for the ninth(!) time in 2009 and most recently the Tal
Memorial in Moscow, one of the strongest events of all time.
At the end of the year he finished second to Magnus Carlsen
in the inaugural London Chess Classic and then was just
pipped by him at Corus in 2010 when he lost a game to Vishy
Anand. So he will relish renewing his rivalry with these two
in London.
Photo © John Saunders:
http://www.londonchessclassic.com
Hikaru
Nakamura
The two-times US champion is nicknamed ‘H
Bomb’ for his explosive and totally uncompromising style of
play, Hikaru Nakamura is widely recognised as one of the
world’s greatest players, particularly at blitz chess where
he is the number one player on ICC (Internet Chess Club). He
is virtually unbeatable at ‘Bullet Chess’ where all the
moves have to be played in one minute.
Nakamura always plays for a win, whether
face-to-face or online, and usually refuses draw offers. He
became a grandmaster at the age of 15 and comparisons have
already been drawn with the late world champion Bobby
Fischer as Nakamura has often enjoyed success in tournaments
where all the other players were Russian speakers. Like
Fischer he also likes to train largely on his own.
He spent the summer of 2009 playing a
series of tournaments in Europe, and achieved several
notable successes, culminating in an outright victory at San
Sebastián ahead of a very strong field. Nakamura then
travelled to Mainz in Germany, where he won the unofficial
world championship of “Fischerrandom chess”, a form of the
game where the pieces are arranged at random on the back row
and a form of chess which is a real test of a player’s
natural talent.
He started 2010 with a bang, top-scoring
on board one for the USA at the World Team Championship in
Turkey and leading his team to a silver medal behind Russia.
He went to make a positive score at the Corus event in Wijk
aan Zee.
Nakamura was home schooled. He plays
tennis and spends time studying the financial markets. He is
interested in maths and history. He is the author of ‘Bullet
Chess: One Minute To Mate’. Nakamura’s stepfather is Sunil
Weeramantry, one of the most successful junior chess coaches
in the USA.
© John Saunders:
http://www.londonchessclassic.com
Michael
Adams
Born in 1971 in Truro, Michael Adams,
known as Mickey, has a strong claim to being Britain’s best
ever chess player. He broke all significant national age
records to become a grandmaster and win the British
Championship at the age of 17 in 1989. He is currently the
top-rated player in the UK.
In the mid-1990s he advanced quickly up
the world rankings, entering the top 20 in 1994 and the top
10 in 1996. In the new century he joined the absolute elite
group of players at the top, demonstrating his remarkable
consistency by remaining at fourth spot behind Kasparov,
Kramnik and Anand. He also proved highly successful in
FIDE’s (and PCA’s) world knock-out championship events,
reaching three semi-finals.
His best knock-out world championship
performance was in 2004 when he came within half a point of
becoming the first British player to win a full world
championship title, losing out narrowly to Uzbek grandmaster
Rustam Kasimjanov on a tie-break in the final in Libya.
Adams’ list of tournament successes makes
proud reading; his best was clear first at Dos Hermanas in
1999 and in recent years he has twice won the Staunton
Memorial tournament at London’s Simpson’s in the Strand. He
started 2010 in good style by winning the prestigious
Gibraltar International Open.
He has long been an automatic choice for
the England Olympiad team (10 appearances, six on board
one). His performances for England have been consistently
high and he has won 10 team/individual medals in major team
events including team gold at the 1997 European Team
Championship and an individual gold in the same competition
in 2001.
A mild-mannered, unassuming man who
prefers to let his pieces do the talking, Mickey also has a
way with words in his Saturday column in the Daily
Telegraph. He is hugely respected by fellow professionals
and chess fans for his impeccable sportsmanship as well as
his supreme skills on the board.
© John Saunders:
http://www.londonchessclassic.com
Nigel
Short
A grandmaster from the age of 19, Nigel
Short was a child prodigy and is Britain’s most recognisable
name in the chess world. He has had a distinguished career
which includes standing on the edge of the chess summit when
he played Garry Kasparov for the world title in 1993 at
London’s Savoy Theatre.
More recently Short has recorded some
fine performances for the national team and a stunning
performance in August 2009, making by far the best score of
the UK squad over the best of the Netherlands at Simpson’s
in the Strand, the 19th century home of English chess.
As a junior, Short hit the headlines by
sensationally defeating renowned grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi
in a simultaneous display at the age of ten. At 14 Short
tied for first place in the British Championships and
shortly after became Britain’s youngest International
Master.
His meteoric rise continued through his
teenage years and he took the decision to play
professionally. In 1992 Short defeated the legendary Anatoly
Karpov and then the long-time top Western European
grandmaster Jan Timman in matchplay to claim the right to
challenge for the world crown. Facing Garry Kasparov, the
greatest player in the history of the game, Short
demonstrated some moments of brilliance but was well beaten.
Despite this setback, Short has an
enviable list of international tournament victories and has
been a regular fixture for the England Team. Married with
two children, in 1999 he was awarded an MBE for Services to
Chess, and has written columns and book reviews for a number
of Britain’s leading newspapers. Currently ranked well
inside the world’s top 50, Short has also found time to
coach a number of chess prodigies including David Howell
whom he faces in the London Chess Classic.
Photo © Mark Huba:
http://www.londonchessclassic.com
Luke
McShane
Born in 1984, it wasn’t long before Luke
McShane established himself as Britain’s leading chess
prodigy. Aged only eight, he won the World Under-10
Championship on a tie-break.
In 1997 he became an IM at 13 and came
close to a GM norm in the same year. In 1998 he shared first
place with John Nunn at the Bunratty Masters in Ireland
ahead of his coach Jonathan Speelman. He became a
grandmaster at 16, surpassing Michael Adams’ age record for
a British player.
Continuing to mix top-level chess with
his school studies, he represented England in the 2002 Bled
Olympiad, scoring 6.5/11. In that year he came close to
winning the British Championship and won the silver medal at
the World Junior Championship in Goa. In 2003 Luke finished
a fifth in a strong tournament in Reykjavik, ahead of
Michael Adams. Luke excels at blitz and
amongst his successes was the 2003 British Blitz
Championship, where he scored 14½/16.
Luke opted to go up to University
College, Oxford to study Philosophy and Mathematics which
inevitably slowed his development as a player, but he has
continued to play in tournaments and meet strong opposition
in the German and UK team leagues, as well as representing
his university in the annual Varsity chess match. He has met
world champion Viswanathan Anand three times in the
Bundesliga in 2006 and 2007, scoring two draws and one loss.
In 2007 he joined Goldman Sachs, since
then his chess has taken second place to his professional
career, but inspired by his invitation to the London Chess
Classic he has staged something of a comeback in 2009. He
scored 3/3 in the 4NCL in May and then took part in the UK
versus Netherlands match in August, scoring 4½/10. In
October 2009 he represented England in the European Team
Championship in Novi Sad, Serbia, scoring 4½/8 on board two.
He is the UK’s third highest rated player. At the turn of
the year in 2010, he shared first place in the Rilton Cup in
Stockholm.
Photo © Mark Huba:
http://www.londonchessclassic.com
David
Howell
The youngest grandmaster in the UK, David Howell
qualified for the highest status in chess at the age of 16.
He was the youngest player in the world to beat a
grandmaster when he defeated England international John Nunn
in a blitz game in 1999.
Howell achieved further media attention when he drew with
Vladimir Kramnik in an exhibition game in 2002 to become the
youngest player in the world to score against a reigning
World Champion.
Four-time English Chess Federation Player of the Year, in
2008 Howell came within one game of winning the World Junior
Championship and is one of the highest rated juniors in the
world. He is also the reigning 2009 British champion, having
outclassed the field in August. He has twice won the British
Rapidplay Championship.
David enjoys playing football, along with rugby, squash,
and table tennis. Reading and Indie bands make up his
interests off the board.
Photo © John Saunders:
http://www.londonchessclassic.com
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