Talk:Viswanathan Anand

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How is his name pronounced? Can anybody make a recording or describe phonetically?--Sonjaaa 22:16, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

vis-va-naa-tha-n aa-nand --Rrjanbiah 14:05, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I just added something that should help. Most of the vowel sounds in his name are unstressed schwa sounds. "Vish-vah-nuh-thun Ah-nund". I hope this helps. --Malathion 01:55, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

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Contents 1 Name 2 Tournament results for Anand 3 New image? 4 "blitz speed" 5 Topalov "Soviet" ? 6 Sample game

[edit] Name

I think his name is simply "Anand", and Viswanathan is his father's name, used alongside Anand's name for disambiguation purposes. This works sort of like Icelandic names, e.g. "Björk Guðmundsdóttir" (see Icelandic name and Björk#Her_name). Anand has simply gotten used to people calling him "Vishy" thinking that Viswanathan is his first name, and he goes along with it. His father Viswanathan sometimes gets called "Mr. Anand" by non-Indian chessplayers and is amused by the whole thing. A cite and correction in the article would be nice. In fact maybe the article should be renamed "Anand (chess player)". Phr 03:41, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

South Indians have the convention of using initials with the given name which stand for the (given) name of the person's father. Anand used be 'V. Anand' but the initials were expanded according to the convention of the rest of India and the world when he became famous. (See also the last paragraph of Indian_names#Initials) So the adding the explantion would be fine but Viswanathan part must stay in the title (but an additional redirect from V. Anand would be fine) as it is correct and ofcourse as it is the more famous version. Tintin (talk) 04:14, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that was very helpful. I remembered the rest of the story about Anand's father and edited above. An explanation should be added to the article; I'll try to get around to it if nobody else gets to it earlier. Phr 05:44, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Addendum: complete explanation here. Phr 06:33, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

According to the manual of style, article titles should be consistent with how the subject is known in the English-speaking world, so I don't think a move would be appropriate here. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 13:01, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tournament results for Anand

Should we add the results for Anand in big chess tournaments such as Corus, Dortmund, Linares? Very impressive I think Tac ke 11:16, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

In the header, change the date to 1997 from 1994, since http://chess.eusa.ed.ac.uk/Chess/Trivia/AlltimeList.html shows Anand was rated as low as 6 on July 1996 FIDE rating list.

[edit] New image?

The new image is okay, but I personally prefer the old one. Was the old image replaced for copyvio concerns or the like, or just because you thought the new image was better? If the latter, maybe we could include both images in the article? Neilc 04:28, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "blitz speed"

The article claims:

"Vishy", as he is sometimes called, burst upon the upper echelons of the chess scene in the early 1990s, winning such tournaments as the Reggio Emilla 1991 (ahead of Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov). Playing at such a high level did not slow him down either, and he continued to play games at blitz speed.

I find this a little hard to believe; he may certainly play fairly quickly, but I'd be amazed if he was consistently able to beat the other top players in the world "at blitz speed" in non-blitz play. Does anyone have a reference for this claim? Neilc 08:56, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Anand often finishes professional games with more time than he started with, because of the hour added to the clock after the 40th move. He is almost never in time trouble even in very complex positions, for example as I recall he finished Anand - Topalov MTel Masters (2005) with two hours left on his clock. I don't know if this qualifies as "blitz speed" but he certainly plays extremely fast compared to others at the top level. --Malathion 05:19, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, ok -- fair enough. Thanks for the explaination. Neilc 08:56, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Topalov "Soviet" ?

I think the point of the line is to say that he's the strongest player since Fischer to come from a country where there was no influence on chess from the Soviet sport authority. I know that Bulgaria was once a satellite of the Soviet Union but I don't know how much influence the Soviet sport authority had there, but the point is that you could now say that Kasparov is another example of a "rival non-Soviet" since he's Armenian and not Russian. Clearly, that's not what this part of the intro is trying to express.

It could definitely be worded more clearly though. Any ideas? --Ryan Delaney ^talk 00:44, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Bulgaria was dominated by the Soviet Union, but it was never one of the Soviet Republics (USSR). AFAIK Bulgaria has always had its own Chess Olympiad team. Topalov became a GM in 1992; the USSR split up in 1991. From this it should be obvious that Kasparov's situation was not comparable in any way. Even Paul Keres, who was Estonian, was a Soviet because Estonia was a Soviet Republic for the majority of Keres' chess playing carerr. Check Republics of the Soviet Union and note that Bulgaria is not there and it should be clear. Quale 06:12, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

How wd it be to say country without Soviet Russia's guidance in Chess. Another alternative is non-Warsaw pact countries. --Gurubrahma 06:18, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

I think it's OK now. I removed the unneeded quotes from non-"Soviet" to make it simply non-Soviet. Soviet has a well understood and precisely defined meaning (in this context a citizen of the former Soviet Union). Non-Warsaw pact would make the point not work, because the other person listed is Leko who is Hungarian. With both Hungary and Bulgaria being former Warsaw pact nations, it's both accurate and easier to say non-Soviet and let it go at that. I see that the the link to Hungarian should be fixed since it links to a disambig instead of Hungary. Quale 04:45, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sample game

I've removed the ending of the sample game. In the continuation 39. Nd7 Be7 40. Nxe5 dxe5 41. Qf7 h6 42. Qe8+ 1-0 the move 39. Nd7 cannot be made with the knights situated where they are. Perhaps the contributors could review the entire game to see what needs fixing. Eclecticology 17:54, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

The knight moves from f6 to d7. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 14:03, 15 October 2006 (UTC)