He has just drawn his game with Peter Leko which means he is now crowned world champion.
It was a quick game where Leko played the Marshall attack and Anand, as usual, responded with a non-standard variation, thus creating a sharp and complicated situation with chances for either side. A few clever moves (from both sides) later, anand exchanged off a couple of pieces which suddenly turned the game into a dead draw, and a draw was agreed to without much ado.
In other ongoing games, svidler-grischuk is at an extremely interesting position with grischuk looking aggressive. However, he seems to have gone to sleep and has taken over half an hour for his last move (he is yet to move as I write this). If Grischuk can take care of his time troubles, he stands a good chance of winning this one. However, the position is still sharp and the game can go any way.
Gelfand, once again playing the Petroff with black, quickly won a pawn, thus creating a small flutter among the set of Anand fans (at that point of time, Anand’s game was on a knife’s edge). However, Morozevich quickly won back the pawn and the two are now engaged in a good sharp battle. I’m feeling extremely sleepy now, else I’d've stayed up to see this one.
The Kramnik-Aronian game has been boring so far, in fact the only boring game of this round with them locked in a positional battle. I was definitely not going to stay up for that one!
Anyways, Anand’s quick draw means that I can sleep now, and in peace. And yeah, just to remind you, he is the world champion.
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A few hours after India had beaten Pakistan in a thriller to win the ICC World Twenty20, another thriller happened at the Sheraton Centro Histórico Hotel in Mexico City. It was again played out in a little more than two hours, though at a much more relaxed pace (from the spectator’s point of view). There was no live telecast, though there were several webcasts. It started late by Indian time (0030 hrs) so I don’t know how many would’ve actually watched the webcast.
Let us understand what this involves – a somewhat uninfluential team comprising of the two most marketable drivers in F1 (the commercial sustainability of which depends in entirety on these drivers continuing to spar in the matter that they have been over the season) being charged of unbecoming conduct by a high-profile team comprising of, to say the least, two rather unknown and unexciting drivers, whose performance most of the motorsport world could not care less about. Given the commercial reality, the judgment is brilliantly conceived:
1. It was widely reported that Hamilton was by and large ripping off Fonzo’s set-ups, looking at his telemetry, brake setups, tyres and what-have-you. Talented, isn’t he? As a driver, sure. They both are. Pity they’re also a) out and out cheats on a level Schumacher couldn’t conceive of, or b) require plagiarized data to race a car. Information that has now been proven to have been obtained in an unethical manner in the first place. Irony.