LOCKED IN COMBAT: Viswanathan Anand of India and Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria contemplating their moves during their 12th and final game in the FIDE World Chess Championship in Sofia on Tuesday. The Indian, playing with black, defeated the Bulgarian and retained the title.
World champion Viswanathan Anand on Tuesday retained the World Chess Championship title by wrapping up the final game against Veselin Topalov of Russia here.
Anand achieved an improbable win playing with black in the final game to retain the world title by 6.5-5.5 margin after the end of the 12th and final game here.
Experts over the world had predicted that Topalov, at his worst, will draw the last game under normal time control and then the match will be headed in to the rapid tiebreaker.
However, it was not to be as Topalov, trying to look for complications, went haywire in a slightly difficult position and could not recover as Anand kept dealing one lethal blow after another to notch up his fourth world title in 11 years to remain the undisputed king of the game once again.
Anand, thus became the first official world champion in recent history to win two back-to-back matches in world championships against different opponents.
Vladimir Kramnik can also lay his claims for that but for the fact that the match he won against Garry Kasparov in 2000 was not played under the official FIDE flag.
If the last game was any indication, Anand had indeed reserved his best as he knew Topalov will go all out for a win.
The reason for Topalov’s unwarranted aggression was probably based on the fact that Anand is by far regarded as the best rapid chess player in history and Topalov does not have any great reputation in the faster version of the game.
Naturally, the Bulgarian wanted to avoid the tiebreaker.
Anand came up with another opening surprise as he went back to the basics. The Queen’s Gambit declined as black has a solid reputation and it stood up for Anand’s quest as the Indian ace went for the rock-solid Lasker variation.
Topalov, tried to create complications earlier but when the game headed towards a perfect balance, the Bulgarian lost his cool. The decisive moment of the game came on the 32nd move when Topalov simply lost his cool and blundered.
Source : The Hindu
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