The world championship 2008 was basically a rematch between two chess giants. One of them was Viswanathan Anand, who had taken the crown in the 2007 championship, and Vladimir Kramnik who had lost the title to Anand. This rematch was created to prove that indeed Anand had beat down a long time reigning champion.
This particular rematch stemmed from a condition that had been laid out in the world championship of 2007. The condition was that, if there was a new winner of the championship, they were to play another match with the previous champion in 2008. Anand was given the chance to prove himself as a champion while Vladimir had a second chance to try and take back his title.
The match was a one day event organized at an Art Exhibition in Germany. The first condition for the match was that it was going to pick the best 12 games in which a winner will be announced from. If a tie happened in the 12 games, then a game of fast chess was to be employed which would take a maximum of 25minuted per player, down from the normal 6-180 minutes. If another tie occurred in the fast games, then two more blitz games will be played which will have 5minutes 10 seconds plus per move. The last condition was to break off a tie in the blitz; another tie would have resulted in the Armageddon game in which if a draw happened, the player who won the black color in the lots will be the winner.
The first game was an easy draw between the two players after Anand sacrificed a pawn but still had counterplay leverage. Another draw occurred in the second round but the difference in this tie was how much time each player had left; Anand had about 2 minutes left while Vladimir had 9 minutes. In the third round, things were a bit different as Vladimir was taken out by Anand in a 1-0 score. Those who observed the game could clearly see that Vladimir was in a tight corner after Anand used the Semi-Slav defense which his opponent could not recover from.
The fourth round came out in a draw once again and perhaps there was some hope for Kramnik to redeem himself with a win and take back his crown. However in the fifth game, things continue to worsen for him as again he lost in a 0 to 1 win against his opponent. It is interesting that the same move that had been used in to win the third round was used here again; though Vladimir had already developed a defense against this attack, it caught him by surprise when Anand made his 15th move.
The sixth game saw Anand win once more against the Russian. By this time it was evident that Kramnik was not going to have victory as he wished. Perhaps the tension of losing twice to the same move by Anand got him disoriented and lost this game once more. By the 7th to 9th round, the game Kramnik was drawing to the Indian. He lost the 10th game and managed a draw in the last 11th round. But he had already known his fate long before the end.