Team Anand. Back Row: Peter Heine-Nielsen, Radislaw Wojtaszek, Surya Ganguly, Eric van Reem, Hans-Walter Schmitt Front Row: Aruna Anand, Viswanathan Anand, Rustam Kazimdzhanov
retain World Championship title By GM IAN ROGERS V
Takes It All
iswanathan Anand returned home to India to a hero’s welcome after retaining the world championship title against Boris Gelfand. Anand was congratulated by the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, offered a gift of $360,000 by the govern- ment of Tamil Nadu and greeted on his arrival home in Chennai by a huge crowd. A day earlier Anand had received two trophies, a painting, a giant world champion’s
wreath at the closing ceremony— plus of course the $1.4 million winner’s purse—as well as meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin and going to dinner with the Indian Ambas- sador to Russia. Barely remembered was the fact that Anand has beaten Gelfand by the narrowest of
margins after the main match had finished 6-6 and a series of dramatic tiebreakers were played which could have gone either way. Just a few key moves separated the players—uncharacteristic time trouble mistakes
by the Israeli challenger in simplified positions. “Call it luck, call it destiny,” said Gelfand. Anand could only say “I won because I won.” Neither player suggested that Anand had played better chess throughout the match. Though many commentators believed that this showed that Anand was out of form, Gelfand disagreed, saying, “I didn't let Vishy play the way he would like. If you let him get certain positions, he is unbeatable.” But when the chips were down, the Indian world champion came through—he had won ugly but he had won nonetheless. “This is sport,” said Gelfand. “Somebody has to win.”
CHESS COMES HOME TO MOSCOW
When Anand and Gelfand sat down to play their first world championship game in Moscow, it had been 27 years since the Russian capital had hosted a world title match. Between 1948 and 1969 every title match was in Moscow; logical since every title-
holder and every challenger in that period was from the Soviet Union. Some were Latvian, some Armenian but it mattered little—the match had to be played at the cen- ter of the Soviet empire. The arrival of American Bobby Fischer and defector Viktor Korchnoi were temporary
interruptions, but by 1985 the world title contest was back in Moscow. Indeed, the Hall of Columns witnessed two title matches in 1985: an unfinished five month epic con- test between challenger Garry Kasparov and World Champion Anatoly Karpov, and the rematch won by Kasparov. When communism ended and the USSR broke up, chess’ favored status diminished and,
though Russian cities Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and Elista hosted matches, 1985 was the last time Moscow had seen a world title match until now. It took a $2.55 million offer from freight forwarding billionaire Andrey Filatov to bring
the 2012 match back to the Russian capital and even then Filatov’s bid only narrowly beat a bid by Anand’s home town Chennai.
www.uschess.org 37
PHOTOS: CATHY ROGERS
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