Happy birthday to the 5-times World Chess Champion
VISWANATHAN ANAND
who turns 45 today!
Photo by FIDE.
We wish him a long chess career and many more successes in the future!
Other World Chess Champions born in December
Emanuel Lasker (December 24, 1868 - January 11, 1941)
Photo: Wikipedia
Emanuel Lasker, PhD, was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher who was World Chess Champion for 27 years (from 1894 to 1921). In his prime Lasker was one of the most dominant champions, and he is still generally regarded as one of the strongest players ever.
His contemporaries used to say that Lasker used a "psychological" approach to the game, and even that he sometimes deliberately played inferior moves to confuse opponents. Recent analysis, however, indicates that he was ahead of his time and used a more flexible approach than his contemporaries, which mystified many of them. Lasker knew contemporary analyses of openings well but disagreed with many of them. He published chess magazines and five chess books, but later players and commentators found it difficult to draw lessons from his methods.
Rustam Kasimdzhanov (born December 5, 1979)
Photo: Wikipedia
Rustam Kasimdzhanov is an Uzbekistani chess Grandmaster, best known for winning the FIDE World Chess Championship 2004. He was born in Tashkent, in the former Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. He is an ethnic Uzbek.
In the FIDE World Chess Championship 2004 in Tripoli, Libya, Kasimdzhanov unexpectedly made his way through to the final, winning mini-matches against Alejandro Ramírez, Ehsan Ghaem Maghami, Vasily Ivanchuk, Zoltán Almási, Alexander Grischuk and Veselin Topalov to meet Michael Adams to play for the title and the right to face world number one Garry Kasparov in a match.
In the final six-game match of the Championship, both players won two games, making a tie-break of rapid games necessary. Kasimdzhanov won the first game with black, after having been in a difficult position. By drawing the second game he became the new FIDE champion.
