Anand, Viswanathan, 1969–, Indian chess player. India's youngest national champion at the age of 16, he won the world junior championship and earned the title of grandmaster in 1987. Anand achieved international chess fame in 1991 when he won a tournament that included both the then-world champion Garry Kasparov and the former title holder Anatoly Karpov. After narrowly losing (1998) an International Chess Federation (FIDE) championship match to Karpov, Anand won the championship in a 2000 tournament in Tehran. However, the title of world champion was disputed by Vladimir Kramnik, and Anand lost the FIDE championship two years later. In 2007 Anand became the undisputed unified world champion after winning a Mexico City tournament that included Kramnik and several other top-rated players. He successfully defended his title against Kramnik in 2008, Veselin Topalov in 2010, and Boris Gelfand in 2012, but lost the title to Magnus Carlsen in 2013. Anand was the first Indian and first Asian to hold the world title.
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