PONOMARIOV DID NOT COPE WITH THE "PETROV DEFENSE"

The first game of the final match of the World Cup took place in Khanty Mansiysk today. The chess player from the Ukraine Ruslan Ponomariov (white) made almost no trouble to his opponent Boris Gelfand of Israel (black). The game was drawn on 38 th move.

In the starting game of the final match Ruslan Ponomariov played the “Petrov defense” where his opponent Boris Gelfand is famous to be good at. The well known theoretical development of the game was going till the move 20. After that the positional battle with a minimum advantage of the white pieces began. Further on, Ruslan allowed his opponent to make a forced exchange which led to an almost equal endgame. The black pieces recorded a draw after a perpetual check.

Right after the game, the traditional press conference took place. Ponomariov confessed that he estimated the position in his favor: the white pieces were better centralized and the black knight was wrongly placed on a5. However, his opponent Boris Gelfand found the position unclear for both. According to his analyses the black pieces had no weak points and it was hardly possible for white to get an advantage. “The position was kept on nuances. If someone blundered, we could have made a score result. Today it did not happen, - summed up the Grandmaster from Israel.”