The Knight's betrayal: Moment of excitement, moment of irresponsibility, says Anand for Game 9

Vishy Anand

His title defense in tatters after suffering another loss, world chess champion Viswanathan Anand today said he was left with little choice and decided to go for the kill in the ninth game as he had to drastically change the course of the World Chess Championship Match.

Going into the ninth game today with a two-game deficit, Anand said he had to give it a shot.

“In general, the match situation did not leave me with much of a choice. I had to give it a shot, I saw a couple of moments where I could exit but I decided to give it a shot. It seemed very dangerous for black,” the defending champion said.

The Indian Grandmaster mentioned it was a moment of excitement that led to the blunder. “In a sense it was irresponsible or silly but I spent about 40 minutes on this move and then I suddenly saw his response. And for a second I got excited with this knight move (which was the blunder) and simply missed. As soon as I played the knight move I saw what I had done,” the Indian conceded. *28.Nf1 played in position on the left instead of 28.Bf1

Explaining the match situation, Anand said he had no regrets about his choice of opening. “I needed to change the course of the match drastically that’s why I went for this. I had a rest day to get familiar with the lines. Basically this is what I had to do. This was the correct choice so I have no regrets for that,” he noted.

When asked whether he still will go for the kill in the last three games, Anand said he will try. “Of course, I will try but the situation doesn’t look very good,” he said.

As soon as the ninth game ended, giving Magnus Carlsen an unassailable three points lead, highly regarded British grandmaster Nigel Short came out with a tweet: End of an era.

Carlsen showed to the world that his maturity is not confined to the 64 squares in the post-game conference when the question was posed to him. After a usual poise, came the answer. “Let’s be correct this time,” indicating that the match is not over yet. (Unfortunately, a journalist decided to ask that question to Anand even though the tweet was meant for the GM’s own Twitter followers.)

The Norwegian agreed that he was even scared for the first time in the match.

“Basically all the time I was scared, white’s position looks menacing. I had to calculate as best as could and go with that. It seems that there wasn’t any mate (checkmate),” Carlsen said.

Speaking about his choices in the game, Carlsen said that it was quite complicated. “We got a very sharp position from the opening. Basically I missed something with e5, in general I would like to block the pawns but there too he has options,” he added.

Looking for the counter play, the Norwegian hit back on the queen side. “I just had to go all out for counter play and there were amazing number of complicated lines, I was not sure what to do. As it happened I had to play the only moves for a long time and fortunately for me he (Anand) blundered.”

After his third victory in just nine games, Carlsen is now just a draw away from dethroning Anand who has remained the undisputed world champion since 2007. — PTI/Photos by Anastasiya Karlovich/official website