Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand banked on his vast reservoir of experience in rapid chess to win the Mikhail Tal Memorial Blitz tournament in Moscow with a comprehensive two-point margin over his nearest rival, Levon Aronian of Armenia.
Anand scored a whopping 23 points out of a possible 34 and won 11 out of 17 mini-matches to claim the strongest Blitz tournament in the history of the game.
The Indian ace, known to have mastered the art of rapid chess, had recently suffered a setback in the final of the Corsica Masters chess tournament, where he lost to Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan.
However, this was an excellent turnaround by Anand.
World Cup winner Aronian, who scored 21 points including a 1-1 draw with Anand, finished second.
The third place was shared by Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan and Peter Svidler of Russia, who scored 20.5 points each.
The event was played on a double round-robin basis between 18 players over two days. The event had 11 players above 2700 Elo rating and none below the 2650 mark.
Anand showed clinical approach in crushing his opponents, barring one against Jobava Baadur of Georgia, who came up with a 1.5-0.5 margin. Baddur was the only one who lost both his games against Anand.
Playing solidly in the first half of the event, Anand waited till the 15th round to wrest the lead from Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and thereafter the Indian did not look back.
For the record, Anand lost two, won 14 and drew 18 games to win the event.
Final standings: 1. Viswanathan Anand (Ind, 23); 2. Levon Aronian (Arm, 21); 3-4. Teimour Radjabov (Aze), Peter Svidler (Rus) 20.5 each; 5. Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukr, 19.5); 6-8. Alexander Morozevich (Rus), Alexander Grischuk (Rus), Boris Gelfand (Isr) 18 each; 9-10. Magnus Carlsen (Nor), Anatoly Karpov (Rus) 17.5 each; 11-13. Sergey Karjakin, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Aze), Judit Polgar (Hun) 17 each; 14. Peter Leko (Hun, 16.5); Dmitry Jakovenko (Rus, 15.5); 16. Viktor Bologan (Mda, 10.5); 17. Artyom Timofeev (Rus, 10); 18. Jobava Baadur (Geo, 9).
