Anish
Giri

The Twitter King

If tweeting were a chess discipline, Anish Giri would be number one. By originality and quick wit, no one ranks above him in the chess bubble. And even at the board, there are very few who can rank above Anish Giri. For the past ten years, Giri, Elo peak 2802, has been among the absolute elite.

Supposedly the most eloquent (and certainly the fastest talking) top grandmaster, Giri has also made a name for himself as an author and publicist. His articles appear in various magazines, and he is followed by almost 180,000 subscribers on YouTube.

Beating Anish Giri is more difficult than beating Magnus Carlsen.

Grandmaster Arkadij Naiditsch

Anish Giri was born into the life of a globetrotter. Born in St. Petersburg in 1994 to a Russian mother and Nepalese father, the family moved to Japan in 2002, where the exceptional talent had to study chess largely self-taught. That changed after the move to the chess-loving Netherlands. Polyglot Anish Giri has been the clear Dutch number one for years.

He doesn't play chess as solidly dust-dry as he is said to, ever since all of his 14 games in the 2016 Candidates Tournament ended in draws. One thing's for sure: Giri occasionally misses out on even better results, but he's always hard to beat. It won't be any different at the WR Masters. Grandmaster Arkadij Naiditsch says: "Beating Anish Giri is more difficult than beating Magnus Carlsen."