World Chess Championship Round 12 - And to the Rapids it is

Waiting for the game to begin

Event:World Championship 2012 – Game 10 of 12

Game: Viswanathan Anand (IND) vs. Boris Gelfand (ISR)

Location: Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Date: 28^th May 2012

The last game of the normal format for the World Championship 2012 ended in a draw. Not a major surprise considering that majority of the games this tournament had a similar outcome. Of the 12 games played, 10 ended in a draw and only 2 games had a result coming from it, one for Boris Gelfand and the other for V. Anand.

Game 12^th began with a King’s pawn opening which was countered with a Sicilian defence. And a few moves later, we had a Sicilian Rossolimo variation and a feeling of déjà vu; it was the very same position that we had in game 10. 1. e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 e6 4.Bxc6 bxc6.

This was when Anand decided that enough is enough and played a different move from the 10^th game and the game took its own course from this point. 5. d3 Ne7

Anand again showed his versatility with the sixth move when he played 6.b3 which is a very rare move and the chess records show only one match where this tactic was tried. Interestingly the match was between Boris Spassky and Boris Gulko in 1990 (I know! Too many Boris playing chess!!!). Uninterestingly though, that game had also ended in a draw. 6…d6

On the 7^th move Anand played 7.e5 offering a pawn sacrifice. However, Gelfand rejected the bait and played 7…Ng6. But the 8^th move by Anand showed his intent on making Gelfand go for the pawn when he played 8.h4 thereby limiting the options for the knight to move and forcing Gelfand to consider the pawn sacrifice as an option which he did 8… Nxe5. This was followed by an exchange of knights. 9. Nxe5 dxe5

And the 10^th move was the one where Anand showed why he was so desperate for the pawn sacrifice. 10. Nd2 brought the knight into play and made Gelfand think over his options. That Anand had played his moves in a very short time frame clearly showed that he was following a game plan and had increased the hopes for a positive result to the game. I guess the same was playing in the mind of Gelfand who was stumbled at this move and took close to 40 minutes to consider his options. When asked regarding the move Gelfand stated “I was trying to figure out the best way to play at that moment because, if you make one wrong decision, it may already be too late. I realized that I needed to activate my bishops at any cost.”

Return of the Sicilian Rossolimo

And indeed the idea of these moves was to keep the Bishops out of the game for as long as possible. However, the 40 minutes of thinking helped Gelfand and he came up with a great move 10…c4 thereby clearing the way for his white Bishop to be activated. 11. Nxc4 Ba6

At this stage, Gelfand was willing to offer his pawn at e5 and go materially speaking down in order to gain a positional advantage. Anand brought the attack to the c pawn by bringing his queen into play and was responded by Gelfand placing the queen in between offering an exchange which was taken. 12. Qf3 Qd5 13.Qxd5 cxd5 14. Nxe5.

And here on, Gelfand was in the attacking mode. After the 22^nd move, Anand offered a draw, which was somewhat unexpected at that stage of the game, but which was gladly accepted by Boris and they shook the hands. The game ended in a draw and so did the tournament. It will now progress to the Rapid round which would be played on the 30^th of May 2012. It would consist of 4 rapid games with each player having 25 minutes to play. The players will draw for the colours and the player getting a White in 1^st game would play Black in game 3 and so on.

In case the players are still tied after the 4 rapid games, the tournament will proceed to the Blitz stage where 2 games would be played and each game would be of 5 minutes plus 3 seconds increment after every move. If the winner is not decided in 5 such rounds of Blitz play, there will be a sudden death (people call it the Armageddon of chess!!) game between the players.

The way both the players are playing it does not seem far stretched an idea of the tournament entering the Sudden Death stage for the very first time. The tournament has seen quite a lot of draws and the same has been criticised by a lot of veterans.

GM Hikaru Nakamura’s tweeted: “I must be a very bad chess player since I keep liking Anand’s positions and he keeps offering draws instead of trying to win.”

GM Magnus Carlsen who is currently ranked 1 in the FIDE rankings tweeted: “Really looking forward to the tiebreak of #Anand-Gelfand tomorrow. It’s like in football, even after a boring 0-0 draw you want to watch ET” as well as “Seriously though, I don’t blame the players for agreeing to all those early draws, it’s just appaling that the rules allow them to”

Game 12 Details:

Sicilian Rossolimo: 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 e6 4.Bxc6 bxc6 5.d3 Ne7 6.b3 d6 7.e5 Ng6 8.h4 Nxe5 9.Nxe5 dxe5 10.Nd2 c4 11.Nxc4 Ba6 12.Qf3 Qd5 13.Qxd5 cxd5 14.Nxe5 f6 15.Nf3 e5 16.O-O Kf7 17.c4 Be7 18.Be3 Bb7 19.cxd5 Bxd5 20.Rfc1 a5 21.Bc5 Rhd8 22.Bxe7 ½ – ½.