For Viswanathan Anand, it's all but over

Viswanathan Anand’s reign as world chess champion is all but over. Playing a spectacular ninth game, the Indian found a strong attack and looked like getting a mating attack before Norwegian challenger Magnus Carlsen pulled out the right moves to win his third game in the match. The game lasted only 28 moves but took two-and-a-half hours before the World No.1 made the scoreline 6-3 in his favour.

Carlsen is half-a-point away from dethroning Anand. The defending champion, on the other hand, will have to win all the three remaining games to take the match to the tie-breaker. Anand will play with black pieces in the 10th game on Friday.

Thursday’s game was Anand’s last chance to bounce back. He came three minutes before the match and Carlsen took his seat just before the start. It promised much when Anand started with the queen-pawn opening and Carlsen replied with the Nimzo-Indian Defence, a very popular system for black. This was the first time Anand chose the queen-pawn opening in this match.

Anand opted for a sharp Samisch variation with his fourth move and then enlivened the game with his kingside forays. Obviously, Anand had come prepared for the variation. By move 13, Anand had consumed only 10 minutes to Carlsen’s 30.

The fourth move by white usually leads to sharp, unbalanced positions with chances for both sides. Old masters such as Mikhail Botvinnik, David Bronstein, Efim Geller and Boris Spassky used these systems successfully while Alexei Shirov and Arthur Jussupow played this until recently.

White strives to leave the well-researched paths from time to time and tries some less popular variations in this line. Somehow, the opening lost its charm in the 1960s when black started finding the correct defence. However, in the 1990s, it came back to tournament play thanks to top players dusting it off from the archives.

In order to keep a good pawn structure, white slows down the development and brings out the queen. But Anand did not go for this idea and instead quickly created a strong pawn centre.

Anand took the game to uncleared waters with his kingside charge. Carlsen tried to counter it with his own advances on the queenside. It was an exciting encounter. Commenting on the game, former world women’s champion Susan Polgar quickly recalled a game that her sister Judit had played with black against Garry Kasparov in 1997, though from a different opening.

But by move 15, the game was already out of the book and the played lines. Anand’s 18th move seemed to worry Carlsen. He took a lot of time for his reply and when he did, there was a difference of 30 minutes between them on the clock.

But the position was significant in that Anand had to find a plan to checkmate Carlsen. If he failed, he would give Carlsen a strong counter-attack on the queenside. At this point, Anand had to make the right choice. Otherwise, he would have fallen behind by a move or two after a proper black defence. It was clear that Anand’s pawn chain was too strong.

After move 22, Anand thought for almost 35 minutes before making his move. Not only did Carlsen catch up with Anand on the clock, the Norwegian had also gained 10 minutes by the end of it. Anand had to make some 17 moves in the next 22 minutes.

When he came up with his queen and rook combination between moves 23 and 27, it looked like Anand was about to find a winning plan. He even spent about 40 minutes analysing his kingside attack but, in the end, he blundered a knight move to close the game.

“I missed some defence on the kingside and allowed the pawn chain,” he said. “After that, I had to counter-attack on the queenside,” Carlsen said.

Anand said the match situation did not allow him to be defensive. “I had to do something and that was why I changed my match strategy (on shifting to queen-pawn opening),” he said.

More: http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report-for-viswanathan-anand-it-s-all-but-over-1922936

World Chess Championship: Viswanathan Anand salvages lost position to settle for 4th draw

Defending champion Viswanathan Anand survived by the skin of his teeth, steering the fourth game of the World Chess Championship to a gruelling draw against Magnus Carlsen of Norway, here on Wednesday.

With eight games still to come in the 12-game affair, the scores are tied at 2-2 and the battle is really heating up if the last two games are any indication.

Anand was pushed to the wall for the first time in the match and this happened soon after he was seen pressing for a win in the third game that ended in a draw yesterday. It showed that Carlsen has got steely nerves.

The Norwegian also changed his opening with black and it turned out to be a good ploy after his Caro Kann in the first black game.

The Berlin defense became famous after Vladimir Kramnik used it successfully to beat Russian compatriot Garry Kasparov in the Braingames World Championship match in 2000 at London and since then it has found a stronghold in the elite chess circles.

Anand himself has played the opening with black successfully and he definitely had an idea up his sleeves. However, Carlsen was the first to spring a surprise as early as on move 10 when he moved his Bishop.

While it was not a new move, it was indeed a surprise as it had been played just four times prior to this and three out of those four games were played by Jon Ludvig Hammer, trusted friend and second of Carlsen. More recently, Navara David of Czech Republic also played it successfully to get a draw with Lenier Perez Dominguez of Cuba.

Anand did not get much out of the opening and, while looking for complications, sacrificed a pawn on the queen side, that to the bare eye looked like a poisoned pawn.

Known to never avoid complications, Carlsen took the bait and it was backed by some brilliant intuition as the later part of the game revealed.

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Black is more than OK for Viswanathan Anand

Third game between the Indian GM and Carlsen ends in a draw.
Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen during their third match at in Chennai on Tuesday. - PTI

Black is OK is a book by Hungarian Grandmaster Andras Adorjan. But in the World chess championship match here after three rounds, black seems to be getting more than OK with World champion Viswanathan Anand testing World No 1 Magnus Carlsen to the limit. The black draw in 51 moves and four hours in the third game should give Anand enough confidence to stretch his challenger in the remaining games.

The match is tied at 1.5-1.5 with nine games to be played in the next two weeks. Anand will have white on Wednesday.

Anand came five minutes before the game and waited for Carlsen. He had to because he had black. And it was different from the previous two games when the player with white came first. So Carlsen came first in the first game and Anand in the second.

Carlsen repeated his knight opening from the first game paving the way for Reti to surface. The father of the hyper-modern school, Richard Reti popularised this opening in the early 1900s when he told the chess world it was no longer important to take control of the centre with Queen-pawn and King-pawn openings. One could exert pressure on the centre from the flanks as well using the bishops.

Carlsen varied from the first game by mixing the elements of English with his third move. There was slow progress in the first 10 moves and by the time they castled on Kingside, they had consumed equal time on the clock. The critical position in the opening arose on move 10 when Anand placed his knight in the centre.

Carlsen thought for close to five minutes before deciding to exchange the knights in the centre. Former Women’s World champion Susan Polgar felt Carlsen was slightly better in that position because his bishop was active while Anand’s black-squared bishop was cut off from its line by his own pawn in the centre.

However, two moves later, Susan had second thoughts about her assessment as Anand posted his bishop in the centre. The World champion was threatening to create a pawn chain on the Queenside. Carlsen immediately sensed the danger and have his bishop to capture a knight.
Carlsen had to concede the bishop pair to Anand with that decision but then the Norwegian kept an active knight. Anand ‘s black-coloured bishop continued to be blocked by his own pawn.
By move 18, the players had consumed two hours, each taking more or less an hour, and more than the time taken in the first two games. Carlsen was obviously trying to get into a knight versus bishop ending where his piece would have an edge.

But then contrary to white’s expectations, Anand got a minor breakthrough on move 22. The bishops came into play forcing Carlsen’s Queen right back into a corner next to the King and Grandmasters present in the hall started giving Anand the edge in the endgame
Anand offered a draw after 40 moves but Carlsen did not agree. Finally, when the game was drawn after more exchanges, only the bishops remained on the board.

Carlsen said he made a couple of errors but he did not think they were decisive. He felt there was always some way out but he admitted he was nervous and had to make the accurate moves to get the draw. “I missed some simple things,” he said.

Anand defended his decision to go for the opposite-coloured bishop ending. “We are still in the match. I am making some impressions,’ he observed.

To a question whether the presence of former World champion Garry Kasparov in Chennai made for fighting chess, anand said he had not seen him (Kasparov) anywhere. In fact, he was reportedly not allowed to enter the press room. Reacting to this, Carlsen said. “I don’t wan’t to get into politics. He is a legend, he deserves to be treated with respect.”

Reti Opening (Game 3)
1.Nf3 d5 2,g3 g6 3.c4 dxc4 4.Qa4+ Nc6 5.Bg2 Bg7 6.Nc3 e5 7.Qxc4 Nge7 8.0-0 0-0 9.d3 h6 10.Bd2 Nd4 11.Nxd4 exd4 12,Ne4 c6 13.Bb4 Be6 14.Qc1 Bd5 15.a4 b6 16.Bxe7 Qxe7 17.a5 Rab8 18.Re1 Rfc8 19.axb6 axb6 20.Qf4 Rd8 21.h4 Kh7 22.Nd2 Be5 23.Qg4 h5 24.Qh3 Be6 25.Qh1 c5 26.Ne4 Kg7 27.Ng5 b5 28.e3 dxe3 29.Rxe3 Bd4 30.Re2 c4 31.Nxe6 fxe6 32.Be4 cxd3 33.Rd2 Qb4 34.Rad1 Bxb2 35.Qf3 Bf6 36.Rxd3 Rxd3 37.Rxd3 Rd8 38.Rxd8 Bxf8 39.Bd3 Qd4 40.Bxb5 Qf6 41.Qb7+ Be7 42.Kg2 g5 43.hxg5 Qxg5 44.Bc4 h4 45.Qc7 hxg3 46.Qxg3 e5 47.Kf3 Qxg3+ 48.fxg3 Bc5 49.Ke4 Bd4 50.Kf5 Bf2 51.Kxe5 Bxg3+ 0.5-0.5

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World Chess Championship - After two draws, who will blink first?

Communication theory states that one cannot not communicate. The first two games of the World Championship match between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen ended in quick draws, but must have given the opposing camps plenty of information to work with already.

Game one

Carlsen opened with the unusual 1. Nf3. The Reti opening had not been used in Championship matches for a long time, certainly not in the last 35 games that Anand had been a part of till then. Carlsen's choice would have come as a surprise to Anand in a broad sense, but what the challenger wanted to achieve beyond this is rather unclear.

Home preparation is most effectively translated into an advantage on the board when the game proceeds along theoretical lines of an opening until one of the players springs a surprise. This deviation is either a move that has not been played before at all (a novelty) or a side-line that has not been explored too deeply.

At this stage, one player can bank on the results of the extensive analysis of his seconds while the other will have to find solutions to tricky problems over the board. You either run down the clock trying to find the accurate continuation or end up missing the thread altogether, or both.

It is relatively easier to pull off this kind of an ambush as white because the player who makes the first move is in a better position to steer the game in a particular direction. In a crude example, black may have a novelty prepared in response to a popular queen pawn opening, but if white opens with his king pawn, the trap will have to wait.

Looked at from this perspective, the Reti is not the best choice to usher an opponent towards an ambush. The problem in opening with 1. Nf3 is that black may counter in a variety of ways. In fact, the first game may have started out as a Reti, but eventually transposed into a fianchetto-Grunfeld.

Carlsen admitted in the post-match press conference that he was hardly in control of the game and wasn't ready for the game to have developed at the pace that it did. His choice of opening was not a success, but what was it that Carlsen set out to achieve? It may not have been an attempt to trap Anand with his preparation at all.

Instead, he may just have wanted to play the opening like he would the middle game, trying to put his pieces on their best squares and see how Anand would respond to an unusual first move. Anand's years of opening preparation and an intuitive understanding of the early phase of the game came through as he levelled the position fast. The game ended in a 16-move draw.

Game two

Anand opted for 1. e4, changing-up from the queen pawn opening he has almost exclusively employed across three title defenses from 2008. This alteration, though, was expected. Also, each player in a championship match has at least a couple of responses prepared for both the king and queen pawn openings. What was of interest then, was not that Anand switched back to the king pawn opening, but how Carlsen would respond.

The move 1... e5 is black's most common response to the king pawn opening while 1... c5 (leading to the Sicilian system, considered black's sharpest reply) is also tried frequently. Instead, Carlsen went for the relatively uncommon but respected Caro Kann (1... c6).

It was an interesting choice for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Carlsen has rarely employed the Caro Kann. Secondly, and more tellingly, Anand has played on either side of the Caro Kann many times, most recently during a 32-move win over Ding Liren with white at the Alekhine memorial earlier this year. Put the two together and you can see how it was a smart move on Carlsen's part.

The Caro Kann caught Anand by surprise. Carlsen's seconds have no doubt put the engines to good use studying the opening, and considering they have a big enough database of Anand's Caro Kann games to work with, they must have come up with a concrete set of ideas. Also, if Carlsen had played an opening that Anand was completely unused to, the Indian would have been too wary to attempt anything sharp and their preparation would have gone waste. Anand, a championship veteran, sniffed danger just as the position got critical. He traded queens and settled for a draw in 67 minutes.

Looking ahead

While Carlsen is unlikely to repeat the unorthodox 1. Nf3 in game three, the Caro Kann might be revisited some time in the championship. Anand's seconds will have to come up with enough to convince him that he could play the sharp lines without getting ambushed, but that may require time.

Three days (Anand last played white on the 10th and will do so again on Wednesday) may be too little time for that, and moreover, the team will also have to help the Indian hold with black in the intervening game on Tuesday. It is uncertain if Carlsen will get back to 1. e4 for game three, but what is for sure is that he has shown a fair bit of guile at this early stage despite a lot being made of his inexperience in matchplay.

Live on DD Sports at 3 pm

More: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/after-two-draws-who-will-blink-first-/1193750/0

World Chess Championship: More moves, quicker draw

A shorter draw in terms of time consumed but a little longer in terms of moves. The second game of the 2013 FIDE World Chess Championship match between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen ended in 25 moves on Sunday. That’s nine more than Saturday’s opening game, but 24 minutes shorter than the 90-minute duel which had also ended in a draw.

The third game will be played on Tuesday with Carlsen holding white pieces. Monday will be a rest day. The match is now tied at one 1-1. The first player to score 6.5 points in 12 games will be crowned world champion.

The plot of the second game was not much different from the first. Carlsen seemed to have prepared for this game, though he had probably expected a slightly weaker defence from the five-time world champion. Interestingly, the end of the game was almost similar, the players repeating the moves in identical fashion.

Anand agreed after the game that he was surprised that Carlsen chose this opening, a sharp line of the Caro-Kann Defence. Carlsen confidently played the opening moves of his Caro-Kann Defence and made them rapidly. The opening entered one of the sidelines of Caro-Kann, the Spassky variation and once Anand castled on the queen-side, Carlsen, who had a 14-minute lead on the clock, started thinking, often making faces.

It was a sharp line and the Norwegian had to be careful as Anand had got a good post for the knight in the centre. Carlsen managed to see off the knight with his own knight.

Analysts said this was not a new idea, though Spassky popularised the variation in the 1960s during his matches against Tigran Petrosian. Indian Grandmaster Pravin Thipsay recalled some games played by former world champion Alexander Alekhine in this line. But a more recent exponent of this opening was Anatoly Karpov, who often played the Caro-Kann, but the main line.

After the knight exchange, Carlsen offered a bigger trade off: on move 17, the 22-year-old World No. 1 forced the exchange of the queens and after that it was a matter of time before the players shook hands. “I am sorry that I did not go forward in that position,” Anand said after the game. “But I was a little more prudent to take the draw.” Anand had spent 41 minutes to Carlsen’s 25 in the second game.

The choice for Anand when Carlsen offered the queen exchange was to move his queen away but the Chennaiite reckoned that would have led to an unpleasant situation, as he was losing a queen-side pawn but with some counter. “It was a very complicated position,” admitted Anand. “I spent most of my time on moves 13, 14 and 15.” Anand admitted he reckoned Carlsen would have done more homework on this opening than him. And in that sense, it was important for him to defuse the position. “I am sure he would have gone into more details on this game,” he conceded.

Carlsen said he was not unduly perturbed by the two draws. “It’s a bit similar to my start in the Candidates Tournament in London. What’s happened has happened. In the past, too, I have played some bad games against Vishy and lost. He has also played some bad games and lost to me,” the Norwegian said. Carlsen was quick to add that “he shared only an information and not explanation”.

Anand thought the two games basically gave both players some information about each other. In other words, the world championship has just begun. As Carlsen said, “We are just settling in.”
Anand promised is a lot of action. “It has started to get interesting,” he said. So what plans for Sunday night? Well, the world champion said he would watch Manchester United take on Arsenal!
Good move, that.

The moves
Caro-Kann Defence (Game 2)

1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Bf5 5.Ng3 Bg6 6.h4 h6 7.Nf3 e6 8.Ne5 Bh7 9.Bd3 Bxd3 10.Qxd3 Nd7 11.f4 Bb4+ 12.c3 Be7 13.Bd2 Ngf6 14.0-0-0 0-0 15.Ne4 Nxe4 16.Qxe4 Nxe5 17.fxe5 Qd5 18.Qxd5 cxd5 19.h5 b5 20.Rh3 a5 21.Rf1 Rac8 22.Rg3 Kh7 23.Rgf3 Kg8 24.Rg3 Kh7 25.Rgf3 0.5-0.5

More: http://www.dnaindia.com/sport/report-world-chess-championship-more-moves-quicker-draw-1917048

World Chess Championship - Game 2 between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen drawn like Game 1

The first game between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen ended in a draw.

In this second game, Anand will play with white and Carlsen black a reverse of yesterday's colours. This game is also a draw.

Viswanathan Anand vs Magnus Carlsen.

The world champion vs the World No1; the King vs the Crown Prince. This is the chess battle of this century.

The World Chess Championship unfolds at Hotel Hyatt Regency as history is in the making over the next three weeks.

If Carlsen wins, he would herald a new era in World Championship. If Anand wins, he would be rated along with Garry Kasparov as the most successful world champion in modern chess.

World champion Viswanathan Anand will start with black pieces in the first game.

The first game will be played on Saturday, followed by the second on Sunday with Carlsen having black. The games will start at 3 pm at Hotel Hyatt Regency, the venue of the championship.

There will be a rest day after the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, 10th, 11th and 12th games. After the sixth game, the colours will be reversed so Anand would have black in the sixth and seventh games.

The players are fighting for a purse of $3 million with the winner standing to earn $1.45m and the loser just under $1m. Carlsen has already pocketed $137,000 of the prize fund for agreeing to play on his opponent’s home turf.

The time control for the 12 games will be: 40 moves in two hours for each player, the next 20 moves in one hour and 15 minutes for the rest of the game, with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting after move 61.

If the match goes into tiebreakers after a 6-6 tie in Classical chess, there will be a four 25-minute rapid chess games to break the tie. If that also ends in a tie, blitz chess mini-matches of two games each will be played. If the first set ends in a tie, the second, third and fourth will follow. In all five sets (10 games) will be played to break the tie.

Even then if the match is tied, the Armageddon (sudden death game) will be applied. In that game, white will get five minutes and black four but black needing only a draw to win the game and match. The rapid, blitz and Armageddon will have separate draw of lots to choose the colour.

The chief arbiter for the championship is, Ashot Vardapetyan from Armenia the same official who was in charge of the Anand-Boris Gelfand World championship match in 2012 in Moscow.

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