Viswanathan Anand took an exciting draw with Russian Alexander Morozevich while Bulgarian Veselin Topalov emerged as the new world champion after drawing with Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan in the 13th and penultimate round of the World Chess Championship here.The draw meant that the Indian ace will now have to battle it out for second place with Russian Peter Svidler in a final round showdown.Topalov emerged as the worthy winner of the championship with his sixth draw on the trot after he had raced to 6.5/7 in the first half. It was a difficult endgame against Kasimdzhanov that Topalov survived in the penultimate round game.As a matter of fact there was no change in the standings after the 13th round as the remaining two games of the day also ended peacefully with Svidler taking it easy against Hungarian Judit Polgar and Brit Michael Adams settling for draw against another Hungarian Peter Leko.With just one round to go Topalov, 9.5 points, cannot be caught by his rivals now as he has a 1.5-point lead. Anand and Svidler remained joint second on 8 points, Morozevich is next on 6.5 while Kasimdzhanov and Leko stand shared fifth on 5.5 points. Adams is seventh on 5 and Polgar is at the bottom of the table on just 4 points. Anand tried his best, but Morozevich was quite up to the task in handling a direct attack against his king. The Winawer variation in the French Defence has been Anand’s pet for a long time and he went for the blood right from the start in the engrossing encounter.Starting off with a thematic bishop sacrifice Anand sacrificed another piece looking for checkmate that was not forthcoming. The Indian eventually sacrificed the queen also, but all that remained was perpetual checks.Topalov suffered for the major part against Kasimdzhanov but in the end some solid defence combined with a time exchange sacrifice bailed him out of his difficulties.Playing black aside of a Berlin Defence, Topalov faced a recently popular variation, could not quite take the tormenting white rooks and lost a queenside pawn. However, the position was never really lost with bishops of opposite colours on board and slow and steady manoeuvring ensured Topalov some compensation.It was on the 35th move that the he came up with a spectacular exchange sacrifice that jolted Kasimdzhanov. It was quite bold as if Topalov had misjudged the position he would have been completely lost due to the material deficit. However as it happened, white was soon driven to passivity and with black pawns ominously poised, Kasimdzhanov had to give the exchange back to force a draw in 42 moves.
