Anand sweats to keep his cool and win chess title for fifth time

Grandmasters don't believe in over-the-top celebratory emotions. Viswanathan Anand pursed his lips and fidgeted slightly. Boris Gelfand pondered, touched his head, and then extended his hand across the table to congratulate his opponent. If you didn't know the ways of chess at the highest level, you wouldn't know Anand had just won the World Chess Championship title for the fourth straight time — and fifth time overall.

It wasn't easy, though. Anand emerged victorious in Moscow on Wednesday by a whisker — 2.5 to 1.5 — after a series of closely fought rapid tie-breaks.

"This was the toughest, tougher than 2010 (when he last defended his title against Veselin Topalov)," Anand said. The championship entered a tie-break — a set of four rapid games played with just 20 minutes on each clock — after the opponents were deadlocked 6-6 after 12 classical games.

Anand, a past world champion in the rapid and blitz formats, started the tie-break as the favourite, but the first rapid game ended in parity. He won the second game, which proved decisive after he scrambled draws in the other two. His reputation as a king of speed notwithstanding, Anand has earlier lost twice at rapid tie-breaks — to Gata Kamsky and Anatoly Karpov.

The tie-break is played on increment, with each player getting 10 seconds added to his time on making a move. At one point, Gelfand had just two seconds left on his clock, and instant defeat loomed. Anand conceded that along with the audience, he too had an eye fixed on the big screen stopwatch.

"When your opponent goes below 15 seconds then it is impossible not to be mesmerized by it. I normally do not pay too much attention to it, but today, I was watching. Very much so," he said.

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