Viswanathan Anand

San Luis: Viswanathan Anand will start his campaign with black pieces against world’s top ranked woman Judit Polgar of Hungary in the first round of the World Chess Championship.

The other big draw of the opening round has Hungarian Peter Leko pitted against Bulgarian Veselin Topalov, who after Anand, are the top favourites to annex the World Championship this year.

In the other first-round matches, Russian Alexander Morozevich will take on with white pieces against defending champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan.

Kasimdzhanov had won the world championship last year in Tripoli, Libya and is considered a fighter to the core with a never-say-die approach.

The fourth match of the first round in this 8-player 14-round event is between Russian Peter Svidler and Englishman Michael Adams.

Anand and Judit have been involved in some great contests between them, the most memorable being the Mainz Chess Classic of 2003 in which the Indian ace came from behind to win the 8-games match by a 5-3 margin.

The most interesting thing about this match was the fact that all the 8 games had ended decisively with Anand winning five and Judit the remaining.

This time too, given the intensity of their clash, the chess pundits are predicting a bloody battle between these two and obviously again Anand holds an edge over the best woman player on the planet.

The world championship this year is being played on a double round robin basis rather than the knockout system employed by Fide, the World Chess Federation, for almost a decade.

The time control, following widespread criticism, has been changed this time as the apex chess body has agreed to organise it under classical chess rules which allows the game to go up to seven hours in place of 4-5 hours games that are normally being adopted these days.

The players have been allotted 2 hours for the first 40 moves, another hour for the next 20 moves and the remaining moves in next 15 minutes with an additional 30 seconds increment after every move is made. (PTI)