Rapid king Viswanathan Anand also turned the blitz king when he won the Plus GSM World Blitz Cup at the Sports Hall of the Military Technical Academy near Warsaw on January 9.

The 30-year old Chennai born player said he was `thrilled' and was quite content that he drew his last two games against Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine in the eleventh round unwilling to blow up such  stable play earlier on in the event. In a 629-player 11 round Swiss format event, Anand made 17.5 points from 22 games for his first tournament title since Wydra Rapid 1998. Each round in the Swiss had two games, one with white and black. The entire 30,500 dollar event was played under one day. First it was delayed after a bomb threat that turned a hoax.
Anand showed no mercy, beating nine opponents and drawing two, Akopian and Ivanchuk. He won 14 games, drew 7 and lost one to Akopian allowing a mate in one.

The Indian picked up $10,000 cash prize and appearance fee of $5,000. He was a deserving winner beating A.Karpov, P.Svidler, B.Gelfand 1.5-0.5 and four other opponents including A.Wojtkiewicz 2-0. For the amount of entries, the event, a maiden venture was well organised and IM A.Filipowich was the chief arbiter. Players exchanged seats after their first game and handed over their results to sector arbiters for every 25 boards. Games were not recorded and a 20-minute break was all players got between each round.

Final placing: 1 V.Anand (Ind) 17.5/22, 2-7 B.Gelfand (Isr), A.Karpov (Rus), V.Akopian (Arm), V.Ivanchuk (Ukr), M.Adams (Eng), V.Epishin (Rus) 17 each, 8-16 V.Tkachiev (Fra), Z.Kozul (Yug), P.Svidler (Rus), A.Shirov (ESP), A.Shchekachev, M.Manik, R.Vaganian (Arm), R.Kempinski, A.Korotylev 16.5 each. Of the 629 players from 30 countries many did not show up and the total GMs at the start line were 70.