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World chess clash heads for do-or-die tie break

India’s reigning world chess champion Viswanathan Anand and his Israeli challenger Boris Gelfand headed Monday to a do-or-die decider after drawing the final regular match in their 12 game Moscow series.

The draw was the tenth in a series that saw the chess stars score just one win apiece. They must now prepare for an excruciatingly tense penalty shootout-style tie break on Wednesday to produce a winner.

Anand agreed to a quick 22nd move draw playing white in the finale despite a lead in position and a clear error committed just two moves earlier by his Minsk-born rival Gelfand.

Former chess champion Vladimir Kramnik said it seemed like Anand’s nerves had simply given out on him and he preferred to try his luck instead during the shootout Wednesday.

“The match (series) has been very tough and very intense,” Anand admitted to reporters after game 12.

But he stressed that “we only draw when it is obvious to us that the game is going nowhere.”

The tie-break — already dubbed the “battle of Armageddon” — provides Gelfand with the perfect opportunity to break Anand’s five-year stranglehold on the title after a grindingly intense battle of nerves.

The two masters have displayed titanic control of the board in the series but lacked the lightning strikes or startling plotting featured in some of the classic encounters of the past.

Wednesday’s series will initially feature four short 25-minute speed chess games. If this produces no winner then up to 10 more games will be played with even shorter time restrictions of just five minutes each.

If the scores are still equal after all that, the match would go to a sudden death decider in which black would get four minutes and white five.

Black would be declared winner in case of a draw in that very last game because of the shorter time in which it can make moves.

Neither Anand nor Gelfand would assess their chances of winning or disclose which colour they would prefer to play first.

“I think I’m here to play chess — it’s up to others to assess chances,” Gelfand said.