Viswanathan Anand is an Indian Grandmaster born in 1969.Vishy, as he is known to his fans, became India´s first Grandmaster and World Champion, first winning the FIDE Championship in 2000 defeating Alexei Shirov in the final and in 2007 winning the World Chess Championship double round-robin tournament with 9 out of 14.
He won several super tournaments including Corus five times (1989,1998,2003,2004,2006), Linares three times(1998, 2007, 2008) and Dortmund Sparkassenmeeting three times(1996, 2000, 2004) .
He is known for his excellent Blitz and Bullet game, which earned him the additional nickname of “Lighting Kid”.
He won 6 Chess Oscars and is one of only 6 players to achieve an Elo rating of 2800.
Veselin Topalov is a Bulgarian Grandmaster born in 1975.He played in the FIDE World Chess Championship 1998,1999,2000,2002,2004 and finally winning the 2005 tournament scoring 6,5 out of 7 points in the first half of it. In the controversial 2006 reunification match against Kramnik he narrowly lost in tie breaks.
By defeating Gata Kamsky in matchplay 4,5 to 2,5 he gained the right to play Anand in the 2010 World Championship.
He won several super tournaments including Linares, MTL Masters and Corus.
He was ranked number one for 27 months.
The game was played on April 25h . Going into the match the two had played 67 games against each other with Anand winning 17, Topalov 13 with 37 draws.
Topalov won game 1 with a brilliant sacrifice, it was on Anand ,who admited after the game to have forgotten his home preparation in the position that immediately led to the winning attack, to fight back.
In an open variation of the Catalan, Anand plays a very unusual and in the live coverage much criticized move. He moves his Queen to a3 forcing the Queens off the board at the cost of doubling pawns on the a-file.
In the ensuing, according to engines completely even position, he is able to create some initiative with a pawn sacrifice. In a dynamic position Topalov makes a positional inferior move which gives Anand the chance to put a lot of pressure on the Black defense.
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