World championViswanathan Anand capitalised on a blunder by Vladimir Kramnikof Russia to beat him in the final round and finish second inthe Zurich Chess Challenge that concluded here.
The Indian ace was under pressure to come back to a 50per cent score after losing to Fabiano Caruana of Italy in thefourth round and got lucky when Kramnik had a rare oversightresulting in a full point and the first victory for the worldchampion in the tournament.
Caruana, meanwhile, deservedly won the tournamentfinishing on a high with a fine victory over Boris Gelfand ofIsrael in his last round game.
The Italian finished with a very impressive tally of fourpoints out of a possible six in the four-player doubleround-robin tournament.
Anand finished sole second with one win, a loss and fourdraws tallying three points in all.
That he left the field a full point behind speaks volumesabout the talent of Caruana who is sure to find his way backin the top ten of world rankings after an excellentperformance here.
Kramnik and Gelfand ran out of steam in the last roundand finished with identical 2.5 points apiece to tie for thethird spot.
Kramnik was apparently pushing for more in the last round against Anand while Gelfand was outdone in a long drawnendgame.
Anand declined the main line of the Berlin defense makingit clear that it was game on against his 2008 WorldChampionship rival.
The middle game had typical nuances of an exchange RuyLopez but Kramnik was not worse in any case. Anand hung inthere with some correct manoeuvres and Kramnik could havedrawn on move 20 if he wanted.
However, on move 21, the Russian came up with aninexplicable blunder. In order to maintain queens on board,Kramnik made the fatal error that cost him heavy materialdamage in just a couple of moves thereafter. Anand won in 27moves.
Caruana gave Gelfand a taste of his own medicine in theCatalan opening. The opening moves were played out at briskpace and the Italian got a small but lasting advantage.
What followed was simply a treat for the fans oftechnical chess as Caruana first won a pawn and then showedhis class winning the endgame despite pawns remaining only onthe king side. Gelfand resigned on move 58.
Results final round: V Anand (Ind, 3) beat VladimirKramnik (Rus, 2.5); Fabiano Caruana (Ita, 4) beat BorisGelfand (Isr, 2.5).