Viswanathan Anand defeated Vladimir Kramnik in his own game at Dortmund on Wednesday.

In the No-Castling Chess encounter, devised by the Russian, Anand won convincingly to take a 1-0 lead in the four-game match for the Sparkassen Trophy.

In this variant of chess, the players are not allowed to castle. The idea is to make the game less theoretical and more dynamic.

The first game certainly didn't disappoint the curious chess fans, as the 14th and the 15th world champions battled it out grimly for 66 moves.

Anand, with white pieces, had more or less sealed his victory long before, though. He was a piece up and in a completely winning position, but Kramnik tried his best to delay the inevitable.