Rediff

Leon, Jul 10: Viswanathan Anand underlined his superiority in the game once more as he outplayed Veselin Topalov 3-1 in the final of the Magistral Ciudad de Leon tournament.

The Indian ace won the second and fourth games with white pieces and drew the other two to grab the title in Leon for the seventh title in 12 years.

Anand has now twice won Leon title three times in a row. After his first title win in 1996, Anand was champion three times in a row from 1999 to 2001 and then again from 2005 to 2007.

Anand's record-breaking seventh win at Leon came around the same time as when Roger Federer was beating Rafal Nadal on way to his fifth Wimbledon title in England .

The last game was a masterpiece. Topalov trailing 1-2 after his loss in the second game, needed to win to take the match into tie-breaker. It was another Sicilian najdorf but with e6 this time. Anand sacrificed a piece on 14th but had three pawns for it and the pawns were connected.

As Anand played very adventurously Toplaov looked slightly better. But Anand offered a queen exchange which Topalov refused and Anand then regained initiative. Anand's two connected passed pawns were now unstoppable and he realized his opening plan of creating strong passed pawns.

Topalov was now lost and then Anand reeled off a series of superb moves. As it ended in 29 moves, it was a great game as Anand made a problematic piece sacrifice, but followed it with a lot of beautiful ideas and crushed Topalov.

The first game of the final was a Closed Ruy Lopez in which Topalov, with white, launched a vicious-looking kingside attack, which was coolly rebuffed by Anand, who forced a draw in 49 moves.

In the second game, a Sicilian Najdorf, Anand slowly outplayed his opponent, queened a pawn on b8 and took the full point on move 37.

After a nice pawn sacrifice in the opening, Topalov lost orientation and let Anand build a strong queenside pressure with his two knights. Anand then masterfully combined queenside attack and kingside defence and won a very good game in 37 moves.

This left Anand a point ahead of Topalov, who launched another Closed Ruy with kingside aggressions in game three. But once again Anand allowed nothing really dangerous to happen and the game was drawn in 38 moves.

With the score at 2-1 Topalov desperately needed to win the next game, with the black pieces but failed to achieve his objective.

The Cuidad de Leon tournament, now in its 20th edition, has been held in various formats, including a phase, from 1998 to 2002, when it was held as an "Advanced Chess" event with the players using computers during the games.

Champions at Leon:

1         1988       Javier Campos Moreno        Chile
2         1989       Josef Pinter                          Hungary
3         1990       Julio Granda                         Peru
4         1991       Eugeny Vladimirov               Russia
5         1992       Boris Gulko                         USA
6         1993       Leonid Yudasin                    Israel
7         1994       Alexander Beljavsky            Ukraine
8         1995       Alexei Shirov                       Latvia
9         1996       Viswanathan Anand             India
10        1997      Vesselin Topalov                 Bulgaria
11        1998      Gary Kasparov [Images]      Russia
12        1999      Viswanathan Anand            India
13        2000      Viswanathan Anand            India
14        2001      Viswanathan Anand            India
15        2002      Vladimir Kramnik                Russia
16        2003      Ruslam Ponomariov            Ukraine
17        2004      Alexei Shirov                      Latvia
18        2005      Viswanathan Anand            India
19        2006      Viswanathan Anand            India
20        2007      Viswanathan Anand            India