Viswanathan Anand

Mainz: Armenian Levona Aronian beat Viswanathan Anand in the tie-breaker of a thrilling final to clinch the Chess 960 World Championship. Anand came from behind to level the scores 2-2 after the rapid games.

The Indian GM is playing this variant of the game for the first time. In it, the position of the pieces at the start is set randomly for each game.

Aronian produced a scintillating performance in the shoot-out to score 1.5-0.5 to lift the title on Thursday. Etienne Bacrot of France won the play-off for third place, beating Rustam Kasimdzhanov 3-1.

Anand lost the first game after spoiling a promising position against Aronian who played with white. But he drew the next two games to force the match into the tie-breaker.

In the 960 Open Chess tournament that began on Thursday, Krishnan Sasikiran garnered an impressive 4.5/5.

He is now in joint fourth place behind joint leaders American Gata Kamsky, Shakhriayr Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan and Hungarian Zoltan Almasi.

Amonst the other Indians, former world junior champion P. Harikrishna ended the first day on 4 points, while the world’s youngest GM, Parimarjan Negi, scored 3 points on his debut. (PTI)