Anand Creates history at Corus. Wins the title for a record Fifth Time
by Vijay Kumar

Wijk Aan Zee, Netherlands: 29th January 2006. Viswanathan Anand won the Corus Title for a Record fifth Time . However this time he shared the First Place jointly with Reigning World Chess Champion Veselin Topalov. Later in a traditional Closing ceremony Anand was awarded the coveted Trophy On the basis of his the tie breaks .

The Hungarian Grandmaster Peter Leko, who won the Corus Championship last year drew against World Chess Champion Veselin Topalov in the final Round game of the championship. This draw gave Anand , who was still on the board playing against Boris Gelfand,, another opportunity to go all out for a win to share the first place with Topalov.

Playing with White pieces Anand opened with e4 and Gelfand replied with c5 and after playing some moves the game finally moved on the Sicilian Najdorf lines. Anand played an exceedingly good game but despite having black pieces against world’s toughest player,. Gelfand fought a long battle. Anand maneuvered his pieces systematically and kept the important squares under his control . In this defensive game Gelfand scarified a few pieces for better position but could not match the wits of the Chess wizard. Unable to bear the weight of Anand’s pieces , Gelfand finally surrendered on 66 moves after playing over 5 hours.

In the other games Vassily Ivanchuk played a long game to beat Sergey Karjakin,, World Cup Champion Levon Aronian defeated Ivan Sokolov while Gata Kamsky lost to Tiviakov.

The remaining games ended in draws

In the reversal of fortunes Over night leader Zoltan Almasy lost his final round Game of the GM Group B to Cheparinov and with 8.5 points surrendered the first place to Magnus Carlsen and Alexander Motylev who both won their respective games to score identical 9 points from 13 games.

Alexander Motylev beat India’s Koneru Humpy in a short 25 moves Petrov Defense game while Kateryna Lahno lost to Magnus Carlsen.

Final Standings

1. V. Anand , V Topalov 9 points
3.V Ivanchuk, M Adams 7.5
5.B Gelfand,S.Karjakin 7
7.S Tiviakov,L Aroninan, P Leko 6.5
10 Van Wely 6
11 E Bacrot, 5.5
12 S. Mamedyarov, G Kamsky, 4.5
14 I Sokolov 4