No dispute, Anand is the champ

Position No. 6028:

Black to play. From the game Kari Pulkkinen-Evgenij Miroshnichenko, Kallithea 2008.

Solution to Position No. 6027: Black wins a piece with 1 . . . Rc1+ 2 Bf1 Ne3!, as the e-pawn will queen after 3 fxe3 fxe3.

World champion Viswanathan Anand of India retained his title with a convincing 6 1/2 -4 1/2 victory over former champion Vladimir Kramnik of Russia in their best-of-12-game match in Bonn, Germany. Anand's only loss came in the 10th game, after he had taken an overwhelming 6-3 lead. He drew the following game to clinch the match.

By agreement, the players split the purse of 1.5 million Euros (about $1.9 million) evenly.

Anand, 38, became champion in 2007 by finishing first in a double round robin of eight top grandmasters. Now he has defeated a worthy challenger in a match, the standard method of determining the champion since the first world championship in 1886. He also recovered most of the rating points he lost in a disastrous warmup tournament before the match. His unofficial post-match rating of 2791 ties him with Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria for first place in the world rankings. Kramnik falls to 2764 but remains in sixth place.

Kramnik, 33, must cope with another disappointment. The World Chess Federation (FIDE) ignored his historic upset of Garry Kasparov in 2000 and did not recognize him as champion until he defeated Topalov in 2006. Then Kramnik, in an attempt to heal rifts with chess politicians, magnanimously agreed to risk his title in an eight-player event but finished second to Anand. His latest loss means he must wait until 2011 for his next chance to become champion.

This was FIDE's first championship without controversy since 1990. Poor decisions by FIDE officials were responsible for much of the chaos of the last two decades, but they deserve credit for abandoning bizarre multi-player events and returning to match play. And they were lucky. The 12-game limit, only half of the traditional 24-game format, could have produced a tie or a fluke result. Instead, fans can acclaim an undisputed champion.

Contest winner

Doug Chapman of Tustin won our contest by correctly predicting the final score of 6 1/2 -4 1/2 . He will receive a chess book as a prize.

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