Chess: How does Black win?

Wednesday's chess...

WORLD champion Viswanathan Anand's chances of retaining his title have been

boosted thanks to Fide's controversial format for the candidates' matches in Kazan, which has now seen the three highest-rated players eliminated as his potential challenger.

The world champion's hopes of retaining his crown already had a jump-start when the world No 2 Magnus Carlsen withdrew due to the format and constant Fide meddling. Also now out are world No 3 Levon Aronian, Veselin Topalov, and former world champion Vladimir Kramnik.

We're left with the unexpected battle between Alexander Grischuk, of Russia, and Boris Gelfand, of Israel, in the six-game final starting on

Thursday – and sadly, neither will likely be able to mount a serious enough challenge for Anand.

Gelfand can count himself lucky after facing near elimination against Gata

Kamsky in the rapid semifinal tiebreaks. From today's diagram, Kamsky, with Black, found 16...c4! winning on the spot. But Gelfand fought back to win the final rapid tiebreaker and then went on to win the blitz tiebreaker 2-0.

The all-Russian match-up between Grischuk and Kramnik proved bizarre due to the lack of fighting spirit with a 14 move draw in game two, and in game four 8 (same) moves followed by a handshake. But Grischuk easily won the blitz tiebreaker to reach the final.

V Kramnik - A Grischuk

Candidates Tiebreaks (Blitz)

Sicilian Maroczy Bind

1 Nf3 c5 2 c4 Nc6 3 d4 cxd4

4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 d6 6 e4

g6 7 Be2 Bg7 8 Be3 0–0

9 0–0 Bd7 10 Qd2 Nxd4 11

Bxd4 Bc6 12 Bd3 a5 13 Rfe1

a4 14 Nd5 Nd7 15 Bxg7 Kxg7

16 Re3 e5 17 Rh3 h5 18 Ne3

Rh8 19 Rg3 Nc5 20 Rd1 h4 21

Rh3 Bxe4 22 Bf1 Bc6 23 Nd5

Bxd5 24 Qxd5 Ra6 25 Re3

Qf6 26 b4 axb3 27 axb3 Rb6

28 h3 Rxb3 29 Rxb3 Nxb3

30 Qxd6 Qxd6 31 Rxd6 Rc8

32 Rd5 Kf6 33 Rd6+ Ke7 34

Rb6 Nc5 35 g3 hxg3 36 fxg3

Rc6 37 Rb5 f5 38 Kf2 b6 39

Ke3 Rd6 40 h4 Kf6 41 Be2

g5 42 hxg5+ Kxg5 43 Kf3

Rh6 44 Rb1 Ne6 45 Kg2 Nd4

46 Bd1 Rc6 47 Rb5 Nxb5 0–1