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Anish Giri: The unique one

"It is a way easier to beat Magnus Carlsen than to beat Anish Giri" Arkadij Naiditsch, an infamous figure of nowadays chess society, opined this about Anish Giri. Sounds extremely august, does not it? Giri is arguably the most versatile person in the world and there are dozens of ingredients that make him so outstanding.

Anish was born in 1994, in Russia, St. Petersburg. Giri’s father is a Nepalese, and mother is a Russian. In 2002, their family moved to Sapporo, Japan. That is where Giri started to grind high-class chess knowledge and then became U-12 chess champion of Russia. 

In 2 years, Giri fulfilled a grandmaster norm making him the youngest grandmaster in the world at that time.

Giri became a grandmaster at the age of 14

He, a Russian citizen with Nepalese origin, came to the Netherlands with his family in 2008. Since then, he has been representing the Netherlands in chess arena. These travels made him a polyglot.

Giri knows Russian, Dutch, and English, and is able to communicate in Japanese, Nepalese, and German. Unlike most other prodigies, Giri was a regular secondary school pupil, following classes every day apart from some limited absences allowed by the school during major tournaments and events. He wanted to concentrate on chess for a year before entering the university.

Anish has been playing in German Chess Bundesliga for SK Turm Emsdetten since 2008 (Bundesliga is a premier league of team chess in Germany, which is arguably the strongest and longest running league of its kind, attracting many top grandmasters from the world). 

Anish Giri and his wife,WGM Sopiko Guramishvili

He is the youngest ever player in the history of this league so far. Furthermore, he has been affiliated with several Dutch chess clubs, including the HSG (Hilversum Chess Society), the Delftsche SchaakClub (Delft Chess Club), HMC Calder and En Passant. 

He plays in the Spanish league for chess club Sestao Naturgas Energia. He used to play in the French league (TOP-16) for l'Echiquier Châlonnais and Russian league for SHSM-64 (Moscow).

He does not have intensive chess training facilities; he has mostly been working by himself. The Dutch Olympic Committee and KNSB (Dutch Chess Federation) is providing him support for some training sessions.

In 2010 and 2012 Anish had an opportunity to work briefly with World Champion Viswanathan Anand in preparation for the World Chess Championship 2010 and 2012 against challengers Veselin Topalov and Boris Gelfand, respectively.

Anish Giri Viswanathan Anand

In 2016 he took part in the Candidates tournament, and bang! He set a record by drawing all 14 games. Social media exploded with some jokes after this awkward performance. Here are some jokes on Reddit. 

Reddit users about Anish Giri

Reddit users about Anish Giri

Reddit users about Anish Giri

Reddit users about Anish Giri

Reddit users about Anish Giri

Giri, himself, accepts these jokes with pleasure. He is active on Twitter and even throws Twitter wars and adds some jokes to these troll pile.

Apart from these all, Giri is a creative writer. He writes articles for many prominent chess magazines: Chessbase, New In Chess, 64 Chess, the latter is a Russian one. And this is who you call a versatile person.

Giri is deemed as a solid chess player, playing close positions, yet once he showed up against Morozevich, setting out his tactical instinct. Let us have a look at that game.   

Long story short, before trolling this majestic chess player keep in your mind that apart from being a rigid chess player, Giri handles wonderful writing skills, pursues with science, plays football and table tennis and simply, as they say, is a great father in his own family.



Published on : 06 Jul 2018

Start the discussion...
  • Thomas Richter
    Thomas Richter
    6 years ago
    Nice article, but several facts are incomplete to wrong. Giri obviously obtained three GM norms - all in the Netherlands in 2008/2009 (last one in the C-group in Wijk aan Zee), still representing Russia, officially changing federations a few months later. After the Emsdetten Bundesliga club collapsed, he played for Solingen (or at least was on the lineup) for the last three seasons. He isn't the youngest ever player in the history of the league - this may be Leopold Franziskus Wagner (*2006) giving his debut last season - while he may well be the youngest-ever regular player. "he has been working mostly for himself" seems at least misleading: He worked with Chuchelov, then Tukmakov, now again Chuchelov. He has Erwin l'Ami as regular and Santosh Vidit as "other" second and also had Robin van Kampen. Seems quite different from So and Nakamura who do work a lot for themselves and may not be 'coachable'. Best regards, Thomas Richter (German chess reporter based in the Netherlands - I visited Wijk aan Zee and other chess events in the Netherlands and talked to several people mentioned in my comment)

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