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Rest of the World defeats Russia
Powered by a brilliant performance from Spaniard Alexei Shirov, the Rest of the World team recorded an emphatic 52-48 victory over Russia in the Match of the Ne
- Indo-Asian News Service
- Updated: February 25, 2007 08:28 AM IST
Read Time:2 min
Moscow:
Powered by a brilliant performance from Spaniard Alexei Shirov, the Rest of the World team recorded an emphatic 52-48 victory over Russia in the Match of the New Century that concluded at the State Kremlin Palace. After another 5-5 draw, the fourth in the match, the World team tallied a commendable 52 points out of a possible hundred against Russia's 48 to win by a convincing margin of four points. The World team's achievement is excellent given the fact that they started as underdogs against the mighty Russians that had three former World Champions, Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov and Alexander Khalifman besides Braingames Match winner Vladimir Kramnik. This is the first time that the Russians lost in such a match in three events so far. In the inaugural year, the erstwhile Soviet Union won by 20.5-19.5 at Belgrade in 1970 and the next time they did even better winning 21-19 at London in 1984. It was the ninth round that cast the dye decisively in World team's favour as they stretched their lead to four points from the overnight three. Starting the day on a nice cushion, former World Champion Viswanathan Anand played out an easy draw against Kramnik with the black pieces. Kasparov, who clearly struggled with his form here right through the match, failed to improve his points tally substantially and had to be content with draws in the last two games against youngest World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine and Anand. Surprisingly, Kasparov scored just one victory in this match besides three losses. Shirov was in ominous form on the last day winning both his matches convincingly. Starting out against Grishchuk on a winning note after an intense struggle, Shirov carried the day well by squeezing Peter Svidler in a keenly contested game to emerge the best player in the match with a score of 7/10. For Russians, Karpov put in a lot of effort winning both the last two games against Nigel Short of England and Judit Polgar of Hungary, but that was already too late. (PTI)Topics mentioned in this article
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