Anand, Carlsen sign up for most exciting chess event of 2012

Is the London Chess Classic going to be the most exciting chess event of 2012? World Chess Champion, Viswanathan Anand and World No. 1, Magnus Carlsen have both confirmed their entry for the fantastic event already.

World Champion 1st to sign-up for London Chess Classic

Fresh from yet another successful title defence, World Champion Viswanathan Anand became the first player to sign-up to play in the 4th London Chess Classic, at Kensington Olympia, 1-10 December, 2012. It is no secret that London is one of Anand’s favourite cities, and this will be his third successive appearance in the tournament.

For well over a decade now, Anand has been among the world’s top five players, and the first Indian to earn the grandmaster title. He played in his first World Championship match back in 1995 in New York, losing to Garry Kasparov. In May, he beat challenger Boris Gelfand in Moscow to clinch his fifth world championship title. He has also won the Chess Oscar (Player of the Year award) 6 times.

Anand is also something of a national hero in India, where in 2007 he won the Padma Vibhushan award, one of India’s most prestigious civilian awards, ahead of several prominent sporting superstars, such as cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. He has become a great ambassador for the game and his country, with his high-profile success over the 64 squares seeing India developing rapidly from a backward chess nation into one of the strongest in the world.

Magnus Carlsen recently topped the Fide July rating list with a personal best of 2837, just 14-points off of the all-time 2851 record set by Garry Kasparov – and the young Norwegian World No 1 could be on-course to break that record in London, as he now joins Anand in being the second player to sign-up for the 4th London Chess Classic, at Kensington Olympia, 1-10 December, 2012.

Carlsen, once famously described as “The Mozart of Chess”, is one of the true superstars of the game, and this will be his fourth consecutive appearance at the London Chess Classic. Since January 2010, Carlsen has held onto the rating top spot 13 times, and is the current two-time winner of the Chess Oscar (Player of the Year award). Next year, he will also be bidding to win the Candidates tournament in London, in order to set-up a world title match-up with Anand.

And he’s just as big a star off the board as he is on it. A lucrative advertising campaign in 2010 with Dutch clothing label, G-Star Raw, has also seen Carlsen stake a claim to being the first Grandmaster supermodel, appearing alongside actress Gemma Arterton on billboards around the world. Earlier this year, Carlsen also appeared on major US TV networks, such as CBS’s flagship current affairs show, “60 minutes”, and Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report”.