Chess titans in 'Armageddon' battle for world crown

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India's world chess champion Viswanathan Anand on Wednesday took the early lead against his Israeli challenger Boris Gelfand in a rapid fire battle of nerves to decide the biggest prize in the sport.

After drawing on Monday the final regular match in their 12-game Moscow series to leave the world championships level, the two grandmasters were forced into the chess equivalent of a football penalty shootout.

Dubbed the 'Battle of the Armageddon' in chess circles, Wednesday's match sees two of the finest players the world has ever seen lock horns in up to 15 thrilling speed chess games to determine the world champion.

Gelfand and Anand drew the first game of the tie-break but the Indian then recorded a nailbiting victory while playing white in the second game amid huge tension at the host venue of the Tretyakov art gallery in Moscow.

The Israeli was in all sorts of trouble at the start of game one despite playing first with the white pieces but pulled himself out of jail with a series of brilliant moves.

Game two initially appeared to have a similar pattern, as Gelfand used all his defensive resources to repel a series of attacks by the Indian champion.

But with the game apparently heading to a draw in the endgame, Gelfand ceded control of the board with a poorly judged move as massive pressure from his rapidly elapsing time allowance took its toll.

After a series of rapid exchanges and the position hopeless, Gelfand resigned. He must now win one of Monday's next two matches to stop the Indian retaining the title.

With the players knowing one mistake could cost the championships, the match was marked by the almost unbearable tension of past great clashes like the epic world title match between Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov in 1984-85.

Anand, dressed in his usual blue shirt, sat rooted to his chair as the more expressive Gelfand ran his hands through his hair and took long walks away from the board to think out his positions.

As tension mounted, Gelfand indulged in his favourite stress-busting habit of repeatedly rotating one of the taken bishop pieces in his right hand.

Wednesday's series will initially feature four short 25-minute speed chess games. If this produces no winner then up to 10 more "blitz" 5-minute games can be played with even shorter time restrictions of just five minutes each.

If the scores are still equal after all that, the match would go to a sudden death single game 'golden goal' decider in which black would get four minutes and white five.

In a final game whose tension would be almost unbearable for the players, black would be declared winner in case of a draw because of the shorter time in which it can make moves.

The two masters have displayed titanic control of the board in the 12-game series this month. But with just one win apiece, it lacked the lightning strikes featured in some of the classic encounters of the past.

However the thrilling tie-break is already worthy of a tournament whose history includes the historic 1972 clash in Reykjavik at the height of the Cold War between Bobby Fischer of the US and Soviet great Boris Spassky.