Boris Gelfand of Israel is the 2009 World Cup champion.

Gelfand won the title by beating Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine in a playoff on Monday. The first four games of the playoff were rapid games (25 minutes per player per game) and Gelfand took the lead by winning the second game. But Ponomariov, with his back to the wall, won the last rapid game to tie the match up again.

The playoff then went to blitz chess (5 minutes per player per game) and Gelfand once again took the lead by beating Ponomariov in the first game when he managed to trap Ponomariov’s queen in 21 moves. Ponomariov rallied again, winning the second game. But Gelfand won the third and Ponomariov finally ran out of reserves, losing the fourth. That clinched the match, 7 points to 5, for Gelfand.

Gelfand was the No. 1 seed in the 128-player event. At 41, he was also one of the oldest, but that did not hinder him in the long tournament. Afterward, in an interview published on the tournament’s Web site, Gelfand pointed out that he had come to the World Cup after competing in the Tal Memorial and the World Blitz Championship that followed it. Altogether, he said he had played more than a month of top-level chess, but he added, “Now I will relax, make up for lost sleep, walk with my daughter. So I will be back to ‘normal’ life.”

This was the second time that Ponomariov, 26, was runner-up in the World Cup. He lost in the final in 2005 to Levon Aronian of Armenia. Still, he came in as the No. 7 seed, so he performed above his pre-tournament rank.