Defending champion Viswanathan Anand retained his world title after an easy draw in the 11th game of the World Chess Championship match in Bonn on Wednesday. With this brilliant performance, Anand becomes one of the few players to win the world title for the third time. Since World War II, only Russians Mikhail Botvinnik, Anatoly Karpov and Garri Kasparov have achieved this remarkable feat.

The 11th game began in quite an extraordinary way. It was obvious from the start that Vladimir Kramnik was desperate and would try to win at all costs. Throughout his career so far, Kramnik has played the solid Russian Defence and Spanish Opening with black pieces against the King Pawn Opening. Though he has lost hardly any games with these openings, he has also not been able to win many. Therefore, when Anand decided to open the game with the King Pawn on Wednesday — for the first time in this match — he clearly started with a great advantage.

In a bid to create complications, the challenger surprised the chess world by opting for the Najdorf Variation of the Sicilian Defence for the first time in his life.

Further, when Anand countered it with a sharp attacking line, Kramnik chose the double-edged Kasparov Variation popularised by the former world champion in the late 80s.

A sharp tactical struggle began as early as on the 12th move when Anand sacrificed a pawn to obtain an important outpost in the centre. Kramnik’s premature decision to accept a Trojan gift on move 12 soon drove him into an unenviable position. In fact, such an anti-positional capture is generally made only by club-level players. Perhaps it was an attempt to tempt the champion into doing something rash.

Anand played aggressively initially and got a dangerous initiative in the early middlegame. On the 15th move Kramnik had to move his king rook and on the 18th he lost his right to castle as he was forced to move his king.

With a powerful safeguarding king move, Anand left Kramnik’s forces scattered and en-prise (undefended) all over the board.

At this stage, however, the champion decided to play it extremely safe as he needed just a draw in two games to retain his title. The champion forced the exchange of queens on the 22nd move by giving a checkmate threat. Anand did not try to press his advantage and accepted the draw offer made by the challenger on the 24th move.

The match, expected to be a close one, was actually completely dominated by Anand from the very beginning. After drawing the first two games, Anand changed his strategy and started playing sharp tactical and double-edged positions unsuitable to style of the challenger.

At this stage the challenger made a huge psychological blunder. Instead of choosing what suited him, Kramnik played into Anand’s hands by allowing the champion to get positions of his choice. When the first half of the match was over, Kramnik had only 1.5 points against Anand’s 4.5.

In the second half, Kramnik changed his strategy and played solid chess. He also changed his openings suitable to his style and actually fought back reasonably to score 2.5 points from the next four games.

On Wednesday, however, he was lucky to get away with a draw, since that is what his formidable opponent was aiming for.

India has reigned supreme in the game over the last couple of years. Earlier this year, the world junior boys and girls titles were won by Abhijeet Gupta and Dronavali Harika. Anand’s victory is the final endorsement of India’s supremacy.

THE MOVES

Anand: White

Kramnik: Black

(1)e4, c5 (2)Nf3,d6(3)d4,cxd4 (4)Nxd4,Nf6 (5)Nc3,a6 (6)Bg5,e6 (7)f4,Qc7 (8)Bxf6,gxf6(9)f5,Qc5(10)Qd3, Nc6 (11)Nb3, Qe5(12)0-0-0,exf5? (13)Qe3!Bg7 (14)Rd5, Qe7 (15)Qg3 Rg8 (16)Qf4!fxe4?(17)Nxe4,f5 (18)Nxd6,Kf8 (19)Nxc8?!,Rxc8(20)Kb1! Qe1 (21)Nc1! Ne7 (22)Qd2! Qxd2 (23)Rxd2, Bh6 (24)Rf2 Be3

Draw agreed.

FACT FILE

Anand after winning the world title in Mexico City, September 2007

Born: December 11, 1969
Nickname: Vishy, Lightning Kid
Title: Grandmaster (1988)
World Champion: 2000-2002 (Fide), 2007-present (undisputed)
Fide rating: 2783 (No. 5 on the October 2008, FIDE ratings list)
Peak rating: 2803 (April 2006, April 2008)

AWARDS

Arjuna award for Outstanding Indian Sportsman in Chess in 1985
Padma Shri in 1987
The inaugural Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in the year 1991-1992.
Padma Bhushan in 2000
Jameo de Oro the highest honour given by the Government of Lanzarote in Spain on 25th April 2001.
Chess Oscar (1997, 1998, 2003, 2004 and 2007)
Padma Vibhushan in 2007

MAJOR TITLES

1983 National Sub-junior Chess Champion
1984 International Master
1985 Indian National Champion
1987 World Junior Chess Champion
1988 Grandmaster
2000 Fide World Chess Champion
2003 Fide World Rapid Chess Champion
2007 Fide World Chess Champion
2008 Fide World Chess Champion
• Anand is one of four players in history to break the 2800 mark on the Fide rating list.
• He was on the top of the world rating list five out of six times from April 2007 to July 2008.
• In October 2008, he dropped out of the world top 3 for the first time since July 1996.
• Anand won three consecutive Advanced Chess tournaments in Leon, Spain after Garri Kasparov introduced this form of chess in 1998, and is widely recognized as the world's best Advanced Chess player, where humans may consult a computer to aid in their calculation of variations.
• His game collection, My Best Games of Chess, was published in the year 1998 and was updated in 2001. It won the British Chess Federation Book of the Year Award in 1998
• Won the Fide-organised World Rapid Chess Championship at Cap d’Agde in October 2003 ahead of ten of the other top twelve players in the world with Kasparov being the only missing player. Each player had 25 minutes at the start of the game, with an additional 10 seconds after each move. Anand is still considered to be the world’s finest Rapid Chess player.