WCC 2008: Anand retains title!!
Viswanathan Anand of India has retained his world championship title by accepting a draw from Vladimir Kramnik.This World Chess Championship further unifies the championship cycle using the match system The game was surprising in that all the games had begun with 1.d4, but Anand trotted out his traditional 1.e4. There was an expectation that Kramnik will parry with his solid Petroff, but needing a win, he threw out the provocative Najdorf Sicilian. He mentioned in the press conference that he had “no clue at all about the theory.”
Anand changed the move order with 8.Bxf6!? gxf6 and 9.f5!? This didn’t appear to catch Kramnik off guard, but he went into a long think and actually got into a bit of trouble. Leading up to the final position, Anand had a clear advantage and had managed to thwart all of Kramnik’s tactical tricks. In a sign of class, Kramnik played 24…Be3, offered a draw which Anand immediately accepted. Kramnik congratulated Anand with a double-handed handshake.
Photo by Vijay Kumar.
Drum Coverage: https://www.thechessdrum.net/blog/2008/10/11/2008-wcc-anand-kramnik/
Article from NDTV.com…
Anand stated that he was nervous from the beginning, but you couldn’t tell. He merely looked a bit uptight. “I would say the tension is quite high, but on the board you’re faced with very, very specific problems and then you somehow just have to deal with them,” he was quoted as saying.
They give a nice overview of his career. although they fail to mention his World Junior title…
Anand’s rise to international fame was meteoric. In 1983, he was playing the sub-junior level as a 14-year-old. Four years later he was India’s first junior world champion and just a year after that, at the age of 18, he became India’s first Grandmaster.
Now, 20 years later, Anand’s won his third world title after 2000 and 2007. He has a world title in the rapid chess format too.
Anand is the only player to have won 5 titles at the prestigious Corus Chess Championships. He has 5 chess oscars given to the best player in the world. He’s only one of four players in history to crack the 2800 mark on the World Chess Federation rating list and he was the first recipient of India’s highest honour the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna. Anand was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2000, the Padma Vibhushan in 2007 and the Padma Shri at the age of 18.
https://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080070534&ch=10/30/2008%208:28:00%20AM
Nice video showing Viswanathan Anand’s hometown of Chennai. They are very bright, articulate and full of ambition.
Video by NDTV.com.
https://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/video/video.aspx?id=42619