The long-awaited unification of the World Championship title after the Kramnik-Topalov match in 2006 greatly complicated FIDE’s task of organizing the subsequent World Championship cycle.
The big problem was that FIDE already announced that the World Champion will be determined by the 2007 World Championship tournament. Before the negotiations about unification took place.
Another problem was also that the line-up of the 2007 World Championship was determined BEFORE the match between Kramnik and Topalov. Topalov, as a 2005 World Champion, was invited. Kramnik, as a classical world champion, didn’t participate in the qualifying cycle.
FIDE decided to resolve this Gordian knot in a radical way. The 2006 pre-match contract included a clause that the winner will play in the World Chess Championship Tournament. The loser – will not. After the match, Kramnik qualified for the tournament and Topalov was not allowed to participate (in return, he would get special benefits in the 2008-2010 cycle).
Therefore, FIDE decided against canceling the 2007 World Championship tournament. Instead, they held it as they initially planned, but with another condition:
- Should the winner of the 2006 match (in this case Kramnik) fail to win the 2007 tournament, he will be granted the opportunity for a match with the winner in 2008.
After Anand won the 2007 World Championship tournament, he immediately had to defend it against Kramnik in a match played from 14th to 29th October of 2008, in Bonn, Germany.
The match was expected to be a very tense and very close encounter. The head-to-head score of the players prior to the match was standing at 2-2. Their ELO ratings were also not very far away (2783 Anand vs 2772 Kramnik). And the age difference was not very big (38 years for Anand vs 33 years for Kramnik).
However, the match turned out to be a very one-sided encounter. By employing a razor-sharp variation of the Semi-Slav Meran variation in game three, Anand gained a very serious initiative and Kramnik was unable to fend it off. Anand later disclosed that the whole line was prepared by his second, Rustam Kasimdzhanov.
In the 5th game, he scored another win with the Black pieces, after employing the Semi-Slav Meran once again. Instead of waiting to see what Kramnik prepared, Anand was the first to deviate (he has clearly learned his lesson after from the 1995 match against the Kasparov). In a roughly equal position, Kramnik went for a tactical operation, but overlooked Anand’s 34th move (34… Nxe3!), which forced him to resign immediately.
After also winning with the White pieces in the game 6, Anand built up a commanding three-point lead and the match was virtually over. Kramnik merely managed to score the consolation goal in the game 10.
After a quick draw in game 11, Anand won the match ahead of schedule and retained his title.
Anand managed to do what Kasparov wasn’t able to do in 2000 – outprepare Vladimir Kramnik. The general opinion was that Anand’s team, consisting of Peter Heine Nielsen, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Surya Ganguly and Radoslaw Wojtaszek. In a later interview, he also disclosed Magnus Carlsen helped him prepare and that they played a number of training games.
SOURCE
World Chess Championship 2008, Wikipedia