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Gelfand, Ponomariov play out a draw

Khanty Mansiysk: Top-seeded Grandmaster Boris Gelfand of Israel played out yet another draw with former World champion Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine in the third game of the final match in the World Chess Cup here.

The match is set to go into the tie-break stage if the last remaining game under normal time control ends in a draw.

The third game of the match was, however, the most interesting of the three played so far and was stretched till the 34th move when both players signed the peace treaty.

Gelfand is a rating favourite in the final but Ponomariov had won the World championship in the same format in 2001-02 to become the youngest ever World champion.

Playing his last white under normal time control games, Ponomariov switched gears and opened with the queen pawn, his king pawn opening had met with a tame draw in the Petroff so this was much on expected lines.

While it was essentially a Slav defence by Gelfand, a rather unexpected choice by Ponomariov led the position akin to a Grunfeld defence wherein the Israeli was quite up to the task in finding the right moves.

The queens got traded early and the queen-less middle game optically offered white some advantage which was quickly neutralised by Gelfand.

Ponomariov won a pawn offering sufficient counterplay for Gelfand with his active king and repeated moves when the time warranted that.

“I did not see an obvious way to get an advantage. Moreover, we were in a time trouble in the endgame. We started with the rare opening: the Slav defence was gradually moved to Grunfeld defence. I mean that my opponent chose not interesting but sound variation of defence. We spent a lot of time for that,” Ponomariov said after the game.

Gelfand agreed that this was till now the toughest game of the match.

“This was the most interesting game in the match. After each move we had an interesting possible development. My situation became crucial after I blundered on move 20. It is hard to say if Ponomariov had a winning chance or not. But the fact is that I had to face real troubles,” conceded the Israeli. Gelfand will take white in the final game and the chess buffs are hoping for a do-or-die encounter from him. — PTI

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