Viswanathan Anand Age, Wife, Children, Family, Biography & More

Some Lesser Known Facts About Viswanathan Anand

• Does  Viswanathan Anand smoke?: Not Known

• Does Viswanathan Anand drink alcohol?: Not Known

• At the age of six, he has learned chess from his mother and a family friend Deepa Ramakrishnan. 

• During his childhood, he used to finish the game of chess in 15-25 minutes while his contemporaries would take 2-3 hours.  

• In order to develop his Chess skills and for further training, he went to the Philippines for one year.

• In 1985, he won the Asian Junior Championship in Hong Kong. 

• He declined to accept the honorary doctorate offered by the University of Hyderabad.

• He is skilled in the languages Tamil, English, German, French, and Spanish.

• He likes Moscow, which is considered the home of chess in the world.

• He is the Brand Ambassador of NIIT. 

• A minor planet in the universe (discovered in 1988) has been named after him ‘Vishyanand,’ by ‘Michael Rudenko’ working in ‘International Astronomical Union.’

• He has a great interest in the statistics, history, and astronomy.

• He considers his intuition as his best trait.

• He has donated his gold medal to a charitable organization ‘The Foundation’ to help the underprivileged children.

• He authored the book ‘My Best Games of Chess,’ that won the ‘Book of the Year’ award in 1998 by the British Chess Federation. 

• In 2010, during a match of International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad, he defeated 39 chess wizards simultaneously; whereas one remained drawn.

• In August 2010, he joined the Olympic Gold Quest’s board of directors.

• To attend the ‘2010 World Chess Championship,’ he travelled 40 hours by road.

• On 7 November 2010, he was invited for a dinner by the former prime minister of India Manmohan Singh with the US President Barack Obama.

• On 24 December 2010, he was invited as a guest of honour by Gujarat University, where a new world record was made by 20,486 chess players who played chess at a single place.

• Indian media channel, ’CNN-IBN,’ has chosen him ‘CNN-IBN Indian of the Year 2012’ and Indian Sportsperson of the year.

• In the 2012 World Championship, after 12 matches, his game was tied at 6-6 score against Boris Gelfand but finally, he won the title for the third time with the 2.5-1.5 score.

• He has also proved his victory of the most difficult tournaments in the world like Linares and Dortmund, three times each.

• The Indian state of Tamil Nadu published a booklet with the details of his achievements from 1986 to 2012 in his honour and also awarded him ₹2 crore.

• Russian President ‘Vladimir Putin’ invited him on tea after his victory of ‘2012 World Chess Championship’ in Israel.

• He is a calm, sober, and unassuming person who refrains from politics.