Viswanathan Anand of India successfully defended his world title by winning the 12th game against Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria. The decisive game was a standard Queen’s Gambit Declined, certainly familiar in depth to both players. With plenty of time on both clocks, Topalov moved a pawn to e4, blocking Anand’s queen’s bishop, probably the fatal error of the match. Anand attacked the granite protection of the king with f5, and thereafter Topalov was in trouble. Anand kept Topalov’s king in a mating net, eventually winning White’s queen for not enough material. And thus was the match decided without the expected overtime games.
All in all, it was a short but great match in which both sides exercised their utmost energies. Those who claim the match was boring perhaps fail to see the almost amazing complexity of the games. All games were queenside openings, Gruenfelds, Slavs, Catalans, even an English, a Nimzo-Indian and a so-called Anti-Nimzo-Indian, often involving gambit pawns and considerable maneuvering. Perhaps the lack of kingside play, usually Anand’s preference, did not result in open games right away, but the late middle and end games were in fact very open affairs.
At 40, Anand is one force supporting the argument that experience cancels out youth in chess. However, a young man who might take the antithesis of this assertion is Magnus Carlsen of Norway, who at 20 is the highest rated player in the world and is waiting in the wings for a shot at the world title.
According to Wikipedia, the next world championship final will be held in 2012, possibly in London where the London Chess Classic organization is negotiating to run the tourney.
The plan now, if it survives future events, is to organize an eight-player contest that will select one winner to challenge Anand for his championship. The organizer of the tournament will choose one of two formats to identify a challenger: either a round robin or a knockout arrangement which will feature two rounds of four games and then a final match of six games between the two winners.
The field of qualifiers is largely closed. Topalov obviously qualifies. So does Gata Kamsky as the loser of the challenger match against Topalov. Carlsen and Vladimir Kramnik, the No. 1 and No. 2 rated FIDE players, are in. So are Levon Aronian, winner of the Grand Prix, and Boris Gelfand, winner of the Chess World Cup. This makes six players. One winner from a field of nine runners-up in the Grand Prix will qualify as the seventh, and the organizer may choose the eighth. So far, Hikaru Nakamura, now quartered in St. Louis, is not among the candidates.
Brevity: A. Grischuk vs. S. Kuliev, 1993 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 Nxe4 4. Qe2 Qe7 5. Qxe4 d6 6. d4 dxe5 7. Qxe5 Qxe5+ 8. dxe5 Bf5 9. c3 Nd7 10. f4 O-O-O 11. Be3 a6 12. Nd2 f6 13. exf6 Nxf6 14. h3 Re8 15. Kf2 Nd5 16. Nc4 Nxe3 17. Nxe3 Bc5 18. Re1 Rxe3; 0-1 (as after 19. RxR, 19. . . Re8 Black will be a piece up after winning the rook on e3).
Winners: BCC $10 Open — Open, 1st-2d C. Chase and D. Vigorito, 3.5-.5; U1800, J. Yao and N. Zhang, 3.5-.5. BCF Quads 10-5 — Sec. 1, 1st Chris Chase, 3.0, 2d L. Times, 2.0; Sec. 2, 1st-2d, Natasha Christiansen and Paul Mishkin, 2.0; Sec. 3, 1st Siddharth Arun, 3.0, 2d M. Griffin; Sec. 4, 1st Nicholas Zhang, 3.0, 2d, Ryan Ottaviano, 2.0
Coming Events: June 5, Seacoast Open, Holiday Inn, 300 Woodbury Drive, Portsmouth, N.H., relyea@opera-mail.com; June 1, 8, 15, 22, 29 MetroWest CC Summer Solstice, Kennedy Senior Center, Natick, inforequest@MetroWestChess.org.
