The match was tied 3-3, but Grischuk won the rapid playoff 2½-½, eliminating Rublevsky from the championship.

In recent years, Rublevsky has mostly switched from playing to coaching and has been working with a number of top players both senior and junior.

He does not engage the teenagers on the sharp end of opening theory, testing his ailing memory against the freshness of their computer-assisted analysis.

Instead he heads a little off the beaten track - not exactly to the jungle, but to lesser-travelled byways where his experience counts.

With Black, he meets 1.e4 with Kan/Paulsen/Taimanov Sicilians; against 1.d4 he generally plays the Queen's Gambit Accepted and the occasional Slav.