TEHRAN After a 180-minute marathon, Indian grandmaster Viswanathan Anand got the first place of the FIDE World Chess Championship here after he beat his Spaniard rival Alexei Shirov. Their showdown began here last Wednesday.

Playing with the whites, Anand beat Shirov at the fourth round of the final stage. The final score was 3.5 points for Anand, 31, and 0.5 points for Alexei, 28, in the fourth round of their fighting for the FIDE title.

The contest is a rival to the brain games championship held in London recently, where Vladimir Kramnik bested former undisputed world champion and his one-time mentor Garry Kasparov.

The previous win on Friday put Anand two games ahead with three to play, in two of which he will have the advantage of using the white pieces. The first game on Wednesday ended in a draw.

After his victory, Anand said that he prides on beating the Spaniard grandmaster. He also thanked Iranians for their hospitality.

This is the first time since the triumph in 1979 of the Islamic Revolution that Iran is hosting a chess competition of such international stature.

Chess, traditionally banned by leading Islamic canonists for centuries, was eventually declared OK by the Founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, a few years after the triumph of the Islamic Revolution and amid sporadic frowning by a few traditional contemporary canonists.

In a brief argumentative rejoinder to an exception in writing by a religious scholar of standing in the wake of his fatwa' on the proposition, Imam Khomeini, said that chess' had totally lost its one-time purpose and status with the people as a game of chance' and as a medium for gambling, and had therefore lost its haram' status.

The Imam's rejoinder was widely published on the national media for public enlightenment, and previous restrictions on the game were immediately lifted.

The Islamic Republic has since sent leading national players of both genders and of all age categories to national and international chess games with proud results.

(IRNA)