Superior tie-break earns Anand title

After Topalov was held to a draw by defending champion Peter Leko of Hungary, Anand was under pressure to score a victory over Gelfand and the Indian ace did it in style for his record fifth triumph here yesterday.

Apart from the highly satisfying victory, Anand had another reason to cheer as he will now cross the magical 2800 ELO barrier for the first time in his career.

The Indian ace stands to gain more than 10 ELO rating points from this tournament which will add to his present rating of 2792.

After Russians Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik and Topalov, Anand will be the fourth player in the history of the game to achieve this peak. The Chennai player did everything right in the event apart from an utterly forgettable loss against old rival Gata Kamsky of United States, earlier in the tournament.

Overall, Anand won six games, lost one, and drew the remaining six. Topalov also achieved the same score with a lone loss against Michael Adams of England but his tie-break score fell shorter than Anand. Since the last Linares tournament in Spain that he won jointly with now-retired Garry Kasparov of Russia, the Bulgarian has been on a real high and also a runaway winner in the world championships tournament at San Luis in Argentina.

However, with this event, Topalov’s winning streak in the high category events has come to a halt.

MAIDEN PGA TITLE THREE BAD PUTTS AWAY