One of the strongest GMs in today's world and No 1 in his country, Viswanathan Anand comes from India, the ancient homeland of chess.
Since he was 13-14 years old he started to play successfully in tournaments. As he was 16 he headed India's team at the World Olympiad of 1986 where he scored 7,5 points out of 11. In two years he earned his GM norm.
In his younger years Anand attracted chess world's attention with his excellent combinational solutions, his almost phenomenal quickness of mind and spontaneity.
His today's style is combining brightly both combinational and positional as well as delicate endgame play.
Other opinions also mark Anand's remarkable combinational vision, being very creative in finding tactical methods, risking willingly in difficult situations on the board, his fighting hard and resourcefully.
For several years he has been 3d (after Kasparov and Kramnik) according to the FIDE World rating list.
Charlie Chaplin said once: "If they want to know me better, let them see my films". Likewise, to know more of Anand, you might read this book containing as many as 700 commented games and a rich photo gallery. The book is likely to help chess players in improving their game.

1. Tomsk 400 Yukos — Morozevich, Akopian, Khalifman, Yakovenko, Inarkiev, Smirnov, Bocharov, Belozerov.
2. Norilski Nikel — Bologan, Dreev, Malakhov, Zviagincev, Onishuk, Galkin, Kobalia, Naer.
3. Maks Ven — Grishuk, Alexandrov, Sakaev, Beliavsky, Vaganian, Rustemov, Motilev, Zhariazdanov.

Full tournament table
Game in PGN format
Game in CA format

32 players took part. Eighteen grandmasters (including Efimenko Zahar (2643), Areshchenko Alexander (2625), Borovikov Vladislav (2595), Baklan Vladimir (2584), Europe woman champion Lagno Ekaterina (2498)), eight international and national masters fought for the total prize fund of $14,000.

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GM Sergey Tiviakov: "The match against Russia, on rating the strongest team of the championship, was one of the most important from the whole event. And the convincing victory in this match brought us the necessary confidence in our strength and completely demoralised our opponents, who lost several other matches afterwards. After the pairing has been announced at the team meeting we have decided to surprise our opponents and spoil their opening preparation, giving Ivan Sokolov a rest day. Well, it was a very wise decision - to meet the strongest team not in the strongest set-up. As a result I moved 1 board up from board 3 to 2, playing Dreev with White (instead of Motylev with Black - he could have tried to break down my Dragon defencies!)" …

For the first time since it has been founded, the Association of Chess Professionals let its voice to be heard. It organized the Internet blitz tournament that could have been declared the world championship judging by its composition.

The 77^th championship of the city was a robin round tournament with 11 players including 6 grandmasters, X category FIDE with average ELO rating 2488. Yet it was a slight irregularity in its composition that defined the leaders and the outsiders - the leaders spurted from the very start. A sharp struggle burst in the upper half of the tournament table and the winner of the competition was defined by supplementary coefficients. Essentially, the game between Valery Potapov and Valery Loginov defined the first place - Loginov won and his coefficients were better than his opponent's ones.
The top seed Denis Evseev, who won the previous championship, was not in his best sporting form. He lost to young Maxim Matlakov a winning position, which prevented him from fighting for the first three prizes. Generally, grandmasters confirmed their class and occupied the upper half of the table.
It was difficult for the players whose rating slightly exceeded 2300, as well as for the veteran G. Chepukaitis. However, M.Matlakov performed on a decent level and his final score -1 could not be considered a failure. Denis Feofanov finished the competition having scored only one point.

It is difficult to say anything new about the traditional tournament; apart this one was the thirteen in a row. The number has become lucky for some players and not lucky for other ones, for example, for the Spaniard Vallejo. His result is more than modest for a chess player who keeps on playing in the super tournaments regularly.
Alexander Morozevich and Vladimir Kramnik won the competition. Morozevich demonstrated easy brilliant play and his fans may only regret about his rare participation in major competitions. His creative potential may be compared to that on of the young Paul Morphy! His imagination and calculating ability are something that needs mentioning! He won the blindfold tournament and obtained a decent result in a rapid event.