A child was once asked what he would like to be. ``world champion,’’ he said without hesitation. And he grew up to become exactly that when he was thirty-one. That child was Viswanathan Anand.
It was indeed a magical moment when Viswanathan Anand became the king of the chess world. He became 15th world `champion in chess after defeating Alexei Shirov of Spain.
World champion- what does that man? It means that the person is the best that game, better than all the other players in the whole world!
What kind of a game is chess?
It is an indoor game which has a board with 64 white and black squares on it. Two players sit opposite each other with the board in the middle, each player uses a set of sixteen men; eight of these are identical men called pawns and the other eight are called pieces. The pieces consist of a king, a queen, two rooks, two bishop and two knights. The players have to move their men by turn, and try to checkmate the opponent’s principal man, the king, while protecting their own king. It is a game that requires mental skill. It was at this game that India’s Viswanathan Anand became the world champion in the year 20000.
Anand was born on 11 December 1969. When he was a child of two, he would pick out his favorite records and remember the songs in each, to play on his father’s radiogram. His mother says that his `photographic memory has helped him in his games too. He was been playing chess from childhood. He learnt the game from his mother at the age of six.
He won the world title after twenty-five years of hard work, concentration and determination. He understood through all these years of experience, that playing for the world title required mental preparation and physical fitness as well. Now Anand is the speediest of all the world champions. Hence he is known all over the world as `The Lightning kid’.
To day if we hold a popularity contest for the celebrities of the world, the winner would certainly be Viswanathan Anand- the friendly neighborhood genius who has become the king of the chess world and has made his country proud!