Anand learned to play chess from his mom when he was 6 years old. From now he was 14, Anand had won the Indian National Sub-Junior Championship with a perfect score of eight wins in nine games. At age 15 he became the youngest Indian to make the international master title. The following year, he won the first of three consecutive national championships. At age 17 Anand became the first Asian to win a world chess title when he won the 1987 FIDE World Junior Championship, which will be available to gamers who haven't attained their 20th birthday by January 1 of the championship year. Anand followed up that success by earning the international grandmaster title in 1988. For the first time because the American Bobby Fischer left handed the name in 1975, a non-Russian had emerged as a favorite to become world chess champion.
Anand's first attempt to win FIDE's world baseball tournament ended in 1991, when he dropped in the quarter finals to Karpov in the FIDE Knockout World Chess Championship. Because of the unusual structure of the case, involving a series of short matches with quick time controls, it had been boycotted by lots of the top players. The choice to use a knockout format sprang from FIDE's problem in securing a prize fund to cover the typical long chain of championship matches after Kasparov's defection from FIDE to form a new company, the Professional Chess Association (PCA; 1993--96). Anand obtained his first title shot in 1995, when he was ranked number two behind Kasparov, but he dropped the PCA championship match to Kasparov with a score of 1 win, 13 draws, and 4 losses. Anand's next title shot came in 1998 against Karpov, who had reclaimed the FIDE name following Kasparov's creation of the PCA. In the time of their match, Anand was rated third, behind Kasparov and Kramnik but ahead of sixth-ranked Karpov. Anand first had to fight his way through the strongest order of knockout matches in chess history so as to play Karpov, who had been directly seeded in the final match. The players drew their regular six-game game with two wins apiece and 2 draws, but Karpov won the two"quick chess" tie-break matches to win the match.
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