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Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria beat Vishwanathan Anand of India in the first game of the FIDE World Chess Championship. Topalov drew maximum advantage of the tiring journey that Anand had to take to reach Sofia in order to defend his title. A 40 hour journey by road isn't the best way to prepare for a title defence at the highest level.

Playing with the black pieces, Anand used the Grunfeld Defense a recent favourite with the champion. However, after playing the first twenty moves at a scorching pace, Topalov induced Anand into a mistake on the 23rd move, as he kept penetrating into black territory with the help of the Knight and Rooks.

Having neglected the development of his defence, Anand had no choice but to resign on the 30th move as it became clear that he was in danger of being mated rather soon.

Anand has very little time to recover now for the second game on Sunday, but will have the advantage of white pieces. The event is a €2 million match, with the winner set to take €1.2million and the title of FIDE World Champion. The match consists of 12 games scheduled between 24th April and 11th May 2010, played in Sofia, Bulgaria. The loser receives €800,000.

In the event of a tie, the match will be decided through a series of rapid tie-breakers. It will be interesting to see if Vishy Anand can recover from this early blow and unsettle the challenger on Sunday.

Fans can check out a move by move replay of the match here

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