MOSCOW, Sept 11: The Rest of the World team Tuesday stretched its lead to three points over Russia on the third day of the “match of the century” pitting a Russian team of 10 chess grandmasters against 10 opponents from other countries.

After the eighth of 10 scheduled rounds in the tournament, Team World led Russia by 41.5 points to 38.5, the ITAR-TASS news agency said.

Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov, generally acknowledged to be the best player in the world, lost the last game of the day to Armenia’s Vladimir Akopian, while Boris Guelfman of Israel defeated Russia’s Alexander Khalifman. All the other games were tied.

The two final rounds were scheduled for Kremlin Wednesday.

Each players must meet every other player on the opposing team in games lasting 25 minutes, with 10 seconds allowed per move.

Two similar such matches, in which the Soviet greats took on the world, were held in Belgrade in 1970, and in London in 1984.

In addition to Kasparov, the Russian team is made up of former World Chess Federation (FIDE) champion Anatoly Karpov, Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Khalifman, Yevgenny Bareyev, Alexander Grushchik, Alexei Dreyev, Alexander Morozevich, Pyotr Svidler and Alexander Motylev, with Vadim Zvyagintsev and Sergei Rublyovsky as back-ups.

With Akopian and Guelfman, the world team line up is: Viswanathan Anand (India) Judit Polgar (Hungary) Ruslan Ponomaryov (Ukraine, current FIDE world champion), Vasily Ivanchuk (Ukraine), Alexei Shirov (Spain), Peter Leko (Hungary), Boris Gelfman (Israel), Nigel Short (Britain), Ilya Smirin (Israel) and Teymur Radzhabov (Azerbaijan), with Vladimir Akopian (Armenia) and Zurab Azmaiparashvili (Azerbaijan) as back-ups.—AFP