Anand wins Eurotel World chess title

Former World champion Vishwanathan Anand won the Eurotel World chess title after playing out a draw with Russia's Anatoly Karpov in the second game of the final in Prague on Sunday.

In a Queen Gambit Accepted game, Anand, who had won the first game on Saturday, took little chances before the players agreed to a draw on the 34th move.

The final score read 1.5-0.5 in the Indian Grandmaster's favour.

Needing a victory to force the tie-break shoot-outs, Karpov, playing with the white pieces, was up against Anand's Semi Slav defence. It was routine deployment of pieces in the opening that gave Anand's pieces ample room to carve a niche and he equalised quite comfortably in the ensuing middlegame.

Karpov went for an attack against the king but his pieces could hardly make an impact against a near impregnable position of Anand. Going for a completely level position, the Indian stalwart exchanged the Knights pair and occupied important central file to initiate his counter attack on the queenside.

By the 20th move itself the dye was cast in Anand's favour. Karpov tried to make a headway along the kingside with a rook lift but Anand was upto the task in matching move for move. Another exchange of a pair of rooks followed on the 31st move and Karpov knew he was fighting a lost battle.

After playing for another three moves, the draw was agreed to on Karpov's proposal.

Both Anand and Karpov are former FIDE World champions and, interestingly, Karpov had beaten the Indian in the rapid play-offs for the FIDE title in 1998 at Lausanne. Since then Anand's quality of play has gone up, while Karpov has slipped considerably and is now out of the world's top 10.

In terms of their previous clashes, Karpov had won twice, while Anand won the Advanced chess match at Leon 5-1. However in terms of all games, including all varieties, the two have played each other 73 times, and Anand now leads the head-to-head by 22 wins to 11 wins for Karpov. 41 games have been drawn.