The Anand Impact for chess in India

Anand, Humpy take Indian chess to new heights
Press Trust of India
New Delhi, December 28, 2006

Viswanathan Anand and Koneru Humpy catapulted Indian chess to new heights while Parimarjan Negi also made his presence felt in the year gone by.

Anand led the way by winning the Corus Super Grandmasters championship for a record fifth time and in the process crossed the magic figure of ELO 2800 for the first time.

Anand became the only player in the tournament’s 68-year-old history to win the event five times and there is no one following him to eclipse his record in the near future.

Humpy summed up the year by picking two gold medals — in women’s rapid individual and mixed team — as the sport made its debut at the Asian Games in Doha while Negi became the second-youngest ever Grandmaster in the history of chess.

The chess revolution started by Anand in the 1990s has now snowballed into a big machine and it was evident by the feats of Indian players with Negi becoming the 15th GM.

Maghesh Chandran, Neelotpal Das and Deepan Chakraborty also claimed the GM title this year apart from a host of International Masters and other title holders in the country.

It was a fairly successful year for world number two Anand, who rounded it off with the dominating win at the Tal Memorial Blitz event in Moscow, where he showed an uncanny consistency in winning the event with one round to spare.

He also recorded triumphs in Melody Amber Rapid and Blindfold tournament in Monaco and Chess Classic of Mainz.

At Monaco, Anand won for the fifth time and in the last four editions it was his third victory. He continued his winning streak in Mainz for the ninth time.

Anand once again won the event in Leon, where he beat Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria. He also came close to winning blitz events in Reykjavik, Iceland and Israel, but finished only third.

The full article is here.