Person of day   -  28 JUNE 2023

ANISH GIRI

ANISH GIRI

Anish Kumar Giri was born in St Petersburg, in a family of a Senegalese father, Sanjay, and Russian mother, Olga. When Anish was small, he began to play at a children’s chess club in St Petersburg, where he was trained by Asya Kovaleva and Andrey Praslov. Although Giri could not demonstrate any outstanding results in children’s chess, his rating grew consistently, alongside his potential. 

Several years later, the boy’s family moved to Japan, while Anish began to represent the Netherlands in FIDE’s rating-list, since he has lived there since 2008. In Holland, Giri performed a dramatic leap- he became a grandmaster when he was 14.6 years- the youngest in the world at that time. In 2009, Anish won the Dutch championship and in 2010 he won the B tournament in Wijk aan Zee, thus qualifying for his first super tournament. 

Soon after, he was a member of Vishy Anand’s team in the match against Veselin Topalov for the world championship in Sofia. Anish learned invaluable lessons about playing at the highest level and, with his trainer Vladimir Chuchelov, he began to storm the chess Olympus. 

In 2011, the young grandmaster won another Dutch championship, before winning his third a year later. He also won a well-attended round-table tournament in Reggio Emilia and his rating reached 2700. At the main tournament in Wijk aan Zee, in a 23-move combination, Anish knocked out Magnus Carlsen- the world’s highest-rated player. 

Anish came first at the world cities’ championship in 2012 with Hogeveen, thrashing Alexei Shirov 4,5:1,5. He won the European Cup with SOCAR (where he performed better than any other player at his board) and he won bronze at the Old World championship with SOCAR and SHSM-64, the latter team also winning the Russian championship and coming third in the premier league with Anish’s help. In 2017, he won the Russian championship with Siberia-Sirius. 

In the last few years, he has been among the top 10 players in the world. His highest rating was 2798 Elo points. Despite his multiple performances, Anish has recently presented his first book, which documented his early successes. Another one of his books carried the intriguing title of After Magnus, which describes 10 candidates for the world championship. He is also a regular contributor to New in Chess.

In 2018, Anish Giri split victory with Magnus Calrsen in Wijk aan Zee.

The grandmaster is fluent in Russian, German, English, Japanese and Nepalese. He is married to Sopiko Guramishvili- another famous chess player. The couple have one son.