Chess showdown begins with draw

NEW DELHI — One of the most highly anticipated chess events in decades began Saturday with defending champion Viswanathan Anand holding Norwegian challenger Magnus Carlsen to a quick draw with the black pieces in the first game of their world-championship match.

The matchup has been seen as Carlsen’s chance to cement his status as the game’s biggest star since Bobby Fischer, but it started with a bit of an anticlimax as the Norwegian slightly misplayed his opening and the game fizzled out into an uneventful draw after just 16 moves.

Playing in Chennai close to where Anand was born, the 43-year-old Indian grandmaster forced Carlsen to repeat a position by chasing the Norwegian’s queen back and forth with a knight. A game is automatically drawn if the exact same position is reached three times.

Chennai was formerly known as Madras.

The result gives Anand a slight early advantage, as he now gets the white pieces in six of the remaining 11 games.

“I wasn’t too thrilled about the way the game went,” Carlsen said. “It didn’t seem like any of my options were particularly promising. I just had to pull the emergency break and go for a draw.”

The 22-year-old Carlsen is a former child prodigy who became a grandmaster at 13 and the game’s top-ranked player at 18 — the youngest No. 1 in history.