Sofia: Viswanathan Anand and Ruslan Ponomariov played the third King v King ending in the MTel Masters Chess tournament as they shared the point in the eighth round after 54 moves.

Anand has been involved in each of the three such unique endings. “I suppose there was no other way we could just offer or accept a draw,” he said referring to the rule of no draw offers being allowed and players restricted from speaking to each other.

King versus King endings are rather uncommon at Grandmaster level, because they generally offer and accept draws when the situation shows no appreciable advantage or is a theoretical draw.

Anand’s sixth draw in eight games gave him fifty per cent with four points from eight games and Ponomariov was the leader at 4.5 points from eight rounds. Veselin Topaov, battling Judit Polgar can go past with a win and Polgar could join Ponomariov with a win over Topalov, whose game with the Hungarian lady was in the Sicilian Taimanov.

The third game between Vladimir Kramnik and Michael Adams, which was a Ruy Lopez closed was still in progress.

The Ponomariov-Anand game was an English Symmetrical Opening, where neither side had any clear advantage. White at times seemed better but it was never good enough to get a win. When black tried any initiative, white had no problems neutralising that at once.

Anand, black, when asked if he thought white was better at any stage, said, “ No, I don’t believe white has chances unless black makes any mistakes. If he can manage two passed pawns, then maybe but it was always comfortable for black. It was a trivial draw and I just went ahead with it.”

Ponomariov said, “It was an interesting end game.” The Ukrainian admitted that it was a draw all the same for quite some time.