There was a somber start to the penultimate games of the World Championship match in Sofia, as Viswanathan Anand and Veselin Topalov stood for a minute's silence in respect of the world's oldest grandmaster, Andor Lilienthal, who died on Saturday.
Aged 99, Lilienthal, who up to recently was organising his 100th birthday celebratory invitational tournament next May in Budapest, spans the generations by going back to the days of Lasker and Capablanca. He was one of the "original" grandmaster awarded the title by Fide in 1950.
A fuller tribute to Lilienthal can be found below.
The match between Anand and his challenger Topalov is poised on a knife-edge by being tied at 5.5-5.5 and will now go to the twelfth and final game of the $3m series, with speed tie-break games on Thursday to ultimately decide the title if the score remains tied at 6-6.
All the games have been long and hard-fought, so it's hardly surprising that tiredness is affecting play. Anand may well rue all the chances he missed in game 9. If anything, now Topalov is the one with the momentum going down the home straight, and in game 11, he almost won.
Luckily for the champion, he found the saving resource 61 Rc3! If 61 ..b2 62 Rxc5 and Ne6+ mates. All this and more can be found below in GM Alex Yermolinsky's outstanding analysis for GOTD - where as a non-member, you can view our free 5 minute preview. To join ICC to view in full, click here.
The match now goes to the wire of a deciding final game on Tuesday, where we'll have live Chess.FM commentary from GMs Ronen Har-Zvi and Miguel Illescas for what's likely to be a tense and gripping final game of this intriguing match. So why not sign-up for ICC today (click here to join) to tune in to the final game - will it be Anand or will it be Topalov?
