Dramatic game 6 in Sochi

Sochi (Russia): World champion Magnus Carlsen on Saturday won the sixth game of the ongoing chess championship match, pulling ahead at the half way stage, after Viswanathan Anand overlooked a one-move opportunity to turn the game and perhaps the match, too, on its head.

After piling pressure on Anand from the beginning, Carlsen blundered after about two hours of play on the 26th move, giving the Indian grandmaster an immediate opportunity to swing things in his favour.

But Anand, a five-time world champion who lost his crown last year, overlooked the correct move, which allowed Carlsen to tighten his grip on the game. Carlsen noticed the opportunity that he had given Anand immediately after making his 26th move. He said he panicked and might not have been able to keep a poker face for long, but Anand made his move within a minute, throwing away the gift.

“Sometimes when you are not expecting a gift, you don’t take it,” Anand said, visibly disappointed with the miss. It was a “pretty terrible game”, he added.

Had he seized the opportunity on the 26th move, Anand would have got an advantageous position, from which he could have even squeezed a win. Carlsen said the tables would have completely turned and he could only fight for a draw had Anand seized the advantage.

Anand, too, later noticed what he had missed. His defence thereafter wasn’t accurate and, in a little over an hour, he ran out of resources to fight on. Recovering from such misses isn’t ever easy, especially if a player is defending.

It was clear from Anand’s looks that he noticed what he had missed, US grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura said on Twitter.

“But this is potentially more serious,” he said, adding that Anand’s miss was “almost as bad as dropping Rohit Sharma on four runs”. He was referring to the Indian batsman’s record-setting 264-run knock against Sri Lanka at the Eden Gardens on Thursday.