ARONIAN EDGES OUT ANAND TO LIFT 960 CHESS TITLE
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August 17, 2007
Mainz, Germany
Viswanathan Anand fought back hard but Armenian Levon Aronian proved
to be too good, beating the Indian Grandmaster in tiebreaker in a
thrilling final to clinch the Chess 960 World Championships.
Playing this variant of the game for the first time where the position
of the pieces at the start is set randomly for each game, Anand fought
from behind to level the scores 2-2 after the rapid games.
Aronian, however, produced a scintillating performance in the shoot-out
to score 1.5-0.5 to lift the title at Mainz on Thursday.
In the playoff for third place, Etienne Bacrot of France who mauled
Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan 3-1.
Anand lost the first game of the four game match after spoiling a
promising position against Aronian who played with white.
After a lot of manoeuvring the players arrived at a chess-like
position where Anand had little to worry about. However, for once,
the Indian ace was under pressure on the clock which eventually had
a telling effect.
After drawing the next two games Anand took the match to tiebreaker
that Aronian won eventually.
"I am happy to retain my title for the second time. It was a tough
match and Anand played well but he committed many mistakes in the
first game and lost," Aronian said.
It will be time for some normal chess again as Anand will start his
campaign for the 10th overall title in Chess Classics Rapid.