Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand banked on his vast reservoir of experience in rapid chess to win the Mikhail Tal Memorial Blitz tournament in Moscow with a comprehensive two-point margin over his nearest rival Levon Aronian of Armenia.
Anand scored a whopping 23 points out of a possible 34 and won 11 out of 17 mini-matches to win the strongest Blitz tournament in the history of the game.
The Indian ace, known to have mastered the art of rapid chess, had recently suffered a setback in the finals of the Corsica Masters chess tournament where he lost the final against Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan.
However, this was an excellent turnaround by Anand.
World Cup winner Aronian, who scored 21 points including a 1-1 draw with Anand, finished second.
The third place was shared by Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan and Peter Svidler of Russia, who scored 20.5 points each.
The event was played on a double round robin basis between 18 players over two days. The event had 11 players above 2700 ELO rating and none below the 2650 mark.