World champion Viswanathan Anand survived a scare from Veselin Topalov and settled for a draw in a hard-fought game of the seventh match of the World Chess Championship here.
Anand had to stave off a stiff challenge from Topalov, who prepared a brilliant new idea to combat the Indian ace in the Catalan opening.
The game was evenly poised for a long time but Anand had to do most of the thinking in the first part of the game.
It was effectively the toughest game for Anand since the first game that he lost as Topalov came up with some remarkable manoeuvres to keep the Indian ace in check.
Topalov's gameplan was simple and at the same time effective after he sacrificed a piece early in the middle game only for a positional compensation.
The new idea was in fact astonishing as Anand found.
Up a piece and trying to find adequate compensation for his opponent, Anand could have felt more than once that he was winning but Topalov's moves kept him under check.
A just indication was the fact that around the 20th move, Anand had less than an hour on his clock to make the remaining 20 moves while Topalov had just consumed three minutes on his clock.
While to some it might have meant a defeat for Anand, the world champion, up against a new idea, was calm and composed and kept Topalov's pieces at bay to get a decent yet unenviable position.
Topalov tried many tricks but Anand always answered in the right fashion which made the experts of the game believe that Topalov's idea was great but it was probably only good enough for a draw.
It took the players 58 moves to reach the drawn result and it was by far the most exciting draw of the match so far.
