Date:24/11/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/11/24/stories/2007112456882000.htm

Sport - Chess

Anand loses title-decider

NEW DELHI: World champion Viswanathan Anand’s brilliant comeback into title contention ended with a final-round defeat to eventual champion Vassily Ivanchuk in the World blitz chess championship in Moscow on Thursday.

Anand, who caught up with Ivanchuk at 24.5 points from 37 games following a penultimate-round victory over Russia’s Alexey Korotylev, lost the decisive game in 37 moves of Sicilian Defence.

Anand, playing white, overlooked a knight ‘fork’ on his rooks and gave up.

Ivanchuk, second to Anand in world rankings, received $25,000. Anand settled for $15,000.

In all, 20 elite players formed the field in the double round-robin format for two days. In this format of blitz chess, every player had four minutes plus two-second increment, for each move, of thinking time in a game.

Ivanchuk had 19 victories to Anand’s 18.

The results (matches involving Anand): Anand bt Magnus Carlsen (Nor) 2-0; bt Alexander Morozevich (Rus) 2-0; bt Alexei Shirov (Esp) 1.5-0.5; drew with Peter Leko (Hun) 1-1; drew with Alexey Dreev (Rus) 1-1; lost to Alexander Grischuk (Rus) 0.5-1.5; bt Michael Adams (Eng) 2-0; bt Rustam Kasimdzhanov (Uzb) 1.5-0.5; bt Boris Savchenko (Rus) 1.5-0.5; lost to Gata Kamsky (U.S.) 0.5-1.5.

lost to Vladimir Kramnik (Rus) 0.5-1.5; bt Sergei Rublevsky (Rus) 1.5-0.5; bt Etienne Bacrot (Fra) 1.5-0.5; lost to Ruslan Ponomariov (Rus) 0.5-1.5; bt Anatoly Karpov (Rus) 1.5-0.5; drew with Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Aze) 1-1; bt Boris Gelfand (Isr) 2-0; bt Alexey Korotylev (Rus) 2-0; lost to Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukr) 0.5-1.5.

Standings: 1. Ivanchuk (25.5), 2. Anand (24.5), 3-4. Grischuk and Kamsky (23.5), 5-7. Kramnik, Leko and Rublevsky (21.5), 8. Morozevich (21), 9. Carlsen (20.5), 10-11. Mamedyarov and Adams (18.5), 12. Ponomariov (18), 13. Kasimdzhanov (17.5), 14-16. Dreev, Gelfand and Savchenko (17), 17. Shirov (16), 18. Karpov (14), 19. Bacrot (12), 20. Korotylev (11.5).