Viswanathan Anand’s career gives us a bit of everything: fearless attacking brilliancies, ice-cold championship nerves, and technical wins that look effortless until you try to copy them. Below are a few of his most celebrated games. We’re describing them in prose — the story and the ideas — rather than walking through move-by-move notation, so you get the flavor without needing a board in front of you. Where you want to replay the moves yourself, the sources at the bottom link to full game records.
The board that keeps showing up
Before the games, meet the position that runs through Anand’s most famous attacks: the Semi-Slav, Meran Variation. Black gives up the center’s tension early, grabs a pawn with …dxc4, and expands on the queenside with …b5 — trading a little structural safety for fast, aggressive piece play. It’s the perfect battlefield for a calculator like Anand.
1. Aronian vs. Anand — Wijk aan Zee (Tata Steel) 2013
This is the one many fans call “Anand’s Immortal.” Played in Round 4 of the 2013 Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee (on 15 January 2013), it saw Anand handle the black pieces against Levon Aronian, then one of the strongest players in the world.
The game came out of a Semi-Slav Meran, and it’s a masterclass in what happens when preparation, calculation, and courage line up. Anand uncorked a stream of piece sacrifices that ripped open the position while his own king sat safely castled. Instead of grabbing material, he poured his pieces toward the enemy king with a series of quiet-looking but venomous moves — knights and bishops arriving on exactly the right squares, one after another, until Aronian’s position simply collapsed under the pressure. Anand won in just 23 moves.
Commentators reached for superlatives immediately, and the game has since been anthologized as one of the finest attacking efforts of the modern era. It’s the perfect example of Anand’s gift: the ability to see a forced sequence several moves deep and trust it completely.
2. Kramnik vs. Anand — World Championship 2008, Game 3
Anand’s 2008 title defense against Vladimir Kramnik in Bonn is often remembered for how thoroughly Anand out-prepared one of the deepest opening theorists in chess history — and it happened in the Semi-Slav again.
In Game 3, playing Black, Anand steered the game into sharp Semi-Slav territory and used the long light-squared diagonal (the h1–a8 diagonal) as a highway for his pieces straight at Kramnik’s position. The win, one of several Anand scored with Black in that match, set the tone for the whole contest. Anand went on to win the match convincingly and keep his title, and his back-to-back Black wins in the Semi-Slav became instant theory that other grandmasters rushed to study.
If you want to understand why the Semi-Slav is so respected at the top level, this match is exhibit A: Anand turned a “solid” defensive opening into a weapon that won games with the black pieces.
3. Topalov vs. Anand — World Championship 2010, Game 12
Some champions are defined by attacks; others by nerve. Game 12 of the 2010 World Championship in Sofia shows Anand’s steel. The match against Veselin Topalov was tied heading into the final classical game, meaning a draw would push things to a rapid tie-break. Instead, Anand — playing Black in a Queen’s Gambit Declined, Lasker Variation — went for the win outright.
The Lasker is famous for trading pieces and defusing tension, but with Topalov pressing for a decisive result, the game sharpened. Topalov overreached, opening lines that suddenly favored Anand’s pieces, and a couple of inaccurate moves let Anand seize the initiative. Topalov resigned, handing Anand the match 6½–5½ — and a title defense won with the black pieces, in his opponent’s home country. It’s one of the gutsiest final-game decisions in World Championship history.
What these games teach us
Look across the three and a pattern jumps out. Anand doesn’t just play sharp openings for the thrill of it — he plays them because his calculation is fast and deep enough to make the risk pay. In the Aronian game that means a hurricane of sacrifices; against Kramnik it means turning a “boring” defense into a winning machine; against Topalov it means gambling on a full-blooded fight when a safe draw was on offer.
That combination — deep preparation plus the confidence to calculate through chaos — is exactly what carried him to five World Championships. We dig into the mechanics of it in Anand’s playing style, and we map out the systems that produce these positions in Anand’s openings.
Where to replay the moves
We’ve kept this page to prose so we’re not risking a single wrong move in transcription. To play through the full games yourself, the game records are collected on the sources linked below — search each event (Wijk aan Zee 2013, World Championship 2008, World Championship 2010) and you’ll find annotated versions across the major chess sites.
Keep exploring
More on the man behind the games: his full profile · his playing style · his opening repertoire · or browse all chess players.
Written and fact-checked by the Chess Lab Academy Editorial Team · Facts and game details verified against Wikipedia, his FIDE profile, and Chess.com, as of July 2026 · Last verified 2026-07-10 · How we verify content.