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Anand retains world chess title

POST DIWALI: Anand brings `Anandam' to India

India's chess grandmaster Viswanathan Anand put to rest the doubtshovering over his status as the 15th classical world chess championwhen he defeated Russia's Vladimir Kramnik 6.5-4.5 in the World ChessChampionship match played at Bonn, Germany on Wednesday. Anand won theduel and retained his world champion title after drawing the eleventhgame against Kramnik in this revengematch. Anand had earlier in 2007 won the unified world championshipheld at Mexico City, where Kramnik finished second and got theeligibility to challenge the champion.

"Behind every successful man, there is a woman," says an anonymousquote. Even though Anand's mother Sushila Viswanathan and his wifeAruna are given credit for his overwhelming success in the chessfield, the third world title, which Anand pocketed at Bonn was notmainly due to the "Queens" at home. Rather the success was because ofthe "Queen pawn opening" that he opted to play in five of the sixgames with white pieces. In the final game, Anand opened with histraditional king pawn and coasted to a draw in 24 moves.

It was a startling sight, when Anand moved the queen pawn first ingame two of the championship and chess pundits felt the adoption of1.d4 with white was a masterstroke. "First we thought either the movewas a secret preparation or rather a mask to hide his preparations forthe latter stage of the competition. But it was not to be," they added.

As the match progressed, Anand persisted with the opening andcompletely drew Kramnik out of his preparation. It is natural thatKramnik would have spentmost of his preparation time and energy on plans to counter Anand'sking pawn opening. The change of strategy by Anand at the crucialchampionship caught Kramnik unaware. According to popular chesssoftware, Anand has played 1. d4 only 67 times in 885 games with whitepieces.

Anand's preparation was so good that he never looked in trouble andhad significant pressure in most of the games barring the single lossin the tenth game. His former second Elizbar Ubliava said Anand is a"creator" in chess and he always thinks ten moves ahead of others inany given position.

A meticulous worker, Anand has done a complete groundwork for queenpawn opening. Moreover, adding 1. d4 to one's repertoire is veryimportant because a world champion is expected to be a versatileplayer and Anand has proved it in the strongest of tournaments, theworld championship itself.

On the psychological side too, Anand kept his coolness. At the startof the championship, chess grandmasters worldwide predicted a toughduel and expected the battle to be decided by subtleties in thenano-region. But Anand proved everyone wrong with his strongtheoretical preparations, especially with the d4 opening.

The cushion of three points lead in the early part of the game helpedAnand tremendously when Kramnik won the tenth game. Despite winningthe title, Anand shared the $ 3 million prize fund with Kramnik asagreed before the start of the championship.

With this success, Anand has settled his personal score with Kramnikand now they have equal number of wins (7) against each other. Beforethe match Anand and Kramnik had played 51 games against each other, inwhich Anand has won four games, Kramnik six games and the rest drawn.

Also, through this victory, 39-year-old Anand confirmed to the worldthat he is a successful match player. Anand's first world championship title came from a knockout world championship held at New Delhi and Tehran in 2000.