Viswanathan Anand wins World Chess Championship 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008 (Bonn)
Viswanathan Anand retained the world title with a 24-move draw against Russian Vladimir Kramnik in the penultimate game of the 12-game World Chess Championship final in Bonn on Wednesday.
The Indian, playing with white pieces, took an unbeatable 6.5-4.5 lead to retain the title.
The game opened in a Sicilian Najdorf as Anand was expected to go for a draw. Kramnik was looking to thwart all such attempts to force a win and take it to the 12th game and then force a tie-breaker to decide a winner.
Needing just half a point, Anand drew after 24 moves as Kramnik failed to find a win despite trying to complicate the game.
Anand earlier won three games -- the third, fifth and sixth -- and lost the 10th game in a match that looked one-sided till Kramnik brought back some life with a win in 10th game.
In the 11th game today, Anand had a 1. e4 start and led to a Sicilian-Najdorf, which Kramnik rarely plays. Kramnik went all out for a win and tried to create wild and unstable positions to throw Anand off-guard, but the Indian Grandmaster was upto the task.
In fact, as Kramnik overstretched in a do-or-die battle, he actually allowed Anand greater play. But in the end the game ended in a 24-move draw.
According to the pre-match rules, the two players share the purse of 1.5 million Euros equally.
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