World chess champion Magnus Carlsen and title challenger India's Viswanathan Anand on Wednesday decided to split points after 47 moves in their fourth game of the title match held in Sochi.
At the end of the fourth game, both players have two points each in the 12-game match.
"Anand started off quite sharply and got into a fine position, but eventually he switched rather unnecessarily to defence. It seems though that he managed to defend it after all," world No.7 and Grandmaster Anish Giri told IANS.
It was a different opening this time around, with Carlsen playing white and starting the game with e4. The Indian chess don decided to be different and opted for the Sicilian defence and played c5.
The game progressed slowly with no pieces going off the board till the 17th move.
"Frankly it looks quite dull, but maybe Magnus will come up with something interesting, as he often manages to," Giri Tweeted during the game.
As if bored with the game's progress, Carlsen went for the first piece exchange in the 17th move, trading his knight for the challenger's knight.
Carlsen followed with a pawn move to c4 with an idea to have a play at the centre. On move 20, Anand retracted his knight to h7 giving Carlsen some space.
After an exchange of pawns, Carlsen went for a rook exchange in his 22nd move and brought out his queen to the centre with Qd3.
At this juncture, experts felt if at all anybody was going to win, it would be Carlsen or the game would end in a draw.
However, the game chugged along with the remaining rooks going off the board with Carlsen going in for an exchange.
With both the players having just their queen, knight and five pawns each, and Anand having brought the situation under control, the position was considered even.
On the chess board, behind every successful king there is a queen. And this turned out to be true for Anand's black king. Anand held on to his queen despite attempts by Carlsen to exchange them.
For Carlsen, the black queen was the hurdle as he was having a better pawn structure, which was advantageous at the end.
The Indian's survival chances were centered around his d5 passer pawn.
"But for the black's pawn on d4 square the game was lost for Anand. At the end Carlsen had a draw for asking with perpetual checks whereas it was a challenging task for the challenger Anand to split the points," world No.23 and Indian Grandmaster P Harikrishna told IANS.
Summing up the fourth game, Giri said: "Good news for Anand, but I think it is important for him in the coming games to play with more confidence. Suffering against Carlsen, is a risky thing to do."
Thursday is a rest day. Anand will play Game 5 on Friday with the white pieces.
