WCh G12: Anand beats Topalov, retains world title

Viswanathan Anand retained his world title today in Sofia, Bulgaria by beating his opponent Veselin Topalov in the 12th and last match game with the black pieces. The Indian won the world title in a tournament in 2007, and now successfully defended it twice in a match. Video added.

For all the match details, rules and regulations we refer to our large overview article here. Here's a summary:The match will take place April 21 - May 12 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Venue is the Central Military Club in Sofia, Bulgaria. The match will consist of 12 games, and if necessary, a 4-game rapid tiebreak, if necessary 5 2-game blitz matches and if necessary 1 sudden death game. The classical games will be played in pairs of 2, so there will be a rest day after every 2 games. No postponements are allowed. Topalov has White in games 1,3,5,8, 10 and 12.

Schedule

The time control for each game is 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting after move 61. The Chief Arbiter is Panaqiotis Nikolopoulos (Greece). The Deputy Chief Arbiter is Werner Stubenvoll (Austria). The total prize fund is 3 million Euros: 2 million for the players, 400,000 for FIDE taxes and 600,000 for organizational costs. The winner will receive 1,2 million Euros while the loser receives 800.000 Euros.

Score

Videos

If you can't see all videos in the player above: this is a cache problem of the browser. We've contacted blip.tv about the problem. Please remove your cache files and try again. Here's the game 12 video separately:

Game 12

Today already fourty minutes before the game, while the players were just about to leave their hotels, already a big amount of TV camera, single-lens reflex cameras, and other digital cameras, and dozens of media people operating them, were waiting in the theater room of the Central Military Club. A game that could be all-decisive, is on the program.For the 6th time Topalov opened with 1.d4, and Anand went back to 1...d5. But no Slav this time. No, the World Champion chose the opening that has been played the most in World Championship matches: the Queen's Gambit Declined. The variation with an early ...Ne4, named after the second World Champion Emanuel Lasker, is known as passive but solid. A bit like the Slav ending Anand used three times, but with the queens still on the board.Anand will certainly be satisfied with a draw. Topalov on the other hand will certainly be pressing today, but it remains to be seen how much risk he's prepared to take. Many locals in Bulgaria will regard another draw as a loss for their hero, since Anand's legendary record in rapid chess is known here too...After a quiet middlegame Anand went both ...e5 and f5. Topalov then seemed to crack under the pressure. He took two pawns very quickly, which simply led to a devastating attack for Black. Anand didn't chose the quickest win, allowing Topalov to reach a RN vs Q ending, but the result was never in doubt. And so Anand decided the match in his favour with the first win for the black pieces in the very last game.At the press conference Anand praised his opponent's fighting spirit. "It was the toughest match I played so far. The games were all long and tough fights." He called the organization "superb", and didn't mind playing in Sofia "as soon as the chess started".To the question why Topalov took on f5, the Bulgarian answered briefly: "I took a risk, and I was punished." Although clearly disappointed about the result, he said he was satisfied about the level he played.Some of Topalov's answers were difficult to understand because just after the game ended, a thunder storm had started in Sofia...The seconds of both players arrived at the venue. As it turned out, Anand had the same group of helpers as in Bonn: Peter Heine Nielsen, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Surya Ganguly and Radoslaw Wojtaszek. We already knew that Topalov worked with Jan Smeets, Erwin l'Ami, Ivan Cheparinov and Jiri Dufek.On Wednesday I'm doing a private interview with Anand, so if you happen to have a brilliant question, drop it below in the comments!

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Links (we keep updating this!)

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC
• Rules & regulations (PDF)
• The Week in Chess with analysis by IM Malcolm Pein and reports by Mark Crowther
• Anish Giri annotating for Chessbase
• Europe-Echecs, also reporting from Sofia
• GM Ian Rogers blogging for the USCF
• Rogers' articles for Crikey (all together)
• GM Kevin Spragget blogging
• GM Susan Polgar with live commentary
• Chessdom (also live commentary)
• Crestbook (GM Sergey Shipov, live commentary in Russian)
• GM Dejan Bojkov analysing the games
• Die Zeit's coverage
• Kramnik interview in Die Zeit
• Schwatt und Weiss (Georgios Souleidis blogging for Der Westen)
• Entwicklungsvorsprung (Georgios Souleidis' blog)
• Schach Welt (live audio commentary & chat with GM Jörg Hickl and IM Ilja Schneider)