Anand claims Corus title

Wijk Aan Zee:

Viswanathan Anand has won the Corus chess tournament defeating beating Boris Gelfand in the last round to lift the trophy ahead of Vesselin Topalov on tie-breaker points. Topalov was held to a draw by defending champion Peter Leko of Hungary, Anand was under pressure to score a victory over Gelfand and the Indian ace did it in style for his record fifth triumph. After the victory Anand surpassed three other four-time champions, MaxEuwe of Holland who won it in 1940, 1942, 1952 and 1958, Hungary's Lajos Portisch who was a winner in 1965, 1972, 1975 and 1978 and Switzerland's Victor Korchnoi who annexed the crown in 1968, 1971, 1984 and 1987. Apart from the highly satisfying victory, Anand had another reason to cheer as he will now cross the magical 2800 ELO barrier for the first time in his career. The Indian ace stands to gain more than 10 ELO rating points from this tournament which will add to his present rating of 2792. After Russians Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik and Topalov, Anand will be the fourth player in the history of the game to achieve this feat.