India's Viswanathan Anand drew the 11th game of the 12-game World Chess Championship final with white pieces against Vladimir Kramnik to take an unbeatable 6.5-4.5 lead and retain his world title.

The game ended in a draw after 24 moves as Kramnik failed to find a win despite trying to complicate the game.

Anand won three games, the third, fifth and sixth and lost the 10th in a match that looked one-sided till Kramnik brought back some life with a win in 10th game.

In the 11th game, Anand needing only a draw managed that in a game that had a 1. e4 start and led to a Sicilian-Najdorf, which Kramnik rarely plays.

Kramnik went all out for a win and tried to create wild and unstable positions to throw Anand off-guard, but the Indian Grandmaster was upto the task.

In fact as Kramnik overstretched in a do-or-die battle, he actually allowed Anand greater play and may well have lost. But in the end the game ended in a 24-move draw.

According to the pre-match rules, the two players share the purse of 1.5 million Euros equally.