World Chess Championship: Anand draws with Carlsen in game 5
Vignesh Radhakrishnan, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, November 14, 2014
In the fifth game of the World Chess Championship Viswanathan Anand playing with white pieces drew with Magnus Carlsen in a relatively short game 5 on Friday.
A well prepared Carlsen
In the press conference that followed game 4 on Wednesday, Carlsen said, “I’m not playing very well. Actually, I’m playing somewhat terribly. My last two games were pretty bad.”
He must have thought about this long and hard during the rest day. Certianly game 5 was an improvement for Magnus.
Magnus sensed that Anand had prepared very well for the championship this time, thus playing a theoritical game will not result in a favourable result for him. He wanted to deviate Anand from usual line of play into unchartered territories and he had partial success in doing that on Friday.
As usual a ‘well-prepared’ Anand started off strongly, but was taken by surprise by Carlsen’s reply to his opening. Magnus replied with ‘Queens-Indian’ defence, a opening in his repertoire for a long time now.
In the past four games, Carlsen was forced into ‘thinking mode’ by Anand, which actually cost the Norwegian game 3 where he lost on time. This time, there was a role reversal. Anand, ‘slightly surprised’ at the variations, took a long time initially to reply to Carlsen’s moves.
Susan Polgar, famous chess commentator wrote in her live blog, “Anand is pausing after this move after both were blitzing out the first 7 moves. It’s obvious that Magnus has something cooking & he’s deciding how not to fall into home preparation.”
Carlsen played the first 17 moves in under just 8 minutes for which Vishy took more than half an hour to reply. But this didn’t prove costly in the end.
As Polgar rightly pointed out in a tweet, “Magnus is ahead by more than 30 minutes. But Anand has plenty of time as both are playing fast.”
A lonely pawn and a fiery Knight
Anand had one concern. One of his pawns as usual strayed into Carlsen’s territory without much of defence. His ‘d’ pawn was proving to be a head-ache.
Polgar tweeted, “Even though white is slightly better, black is fine & will have d4 pawn as a target.”
But then Anand negotiated the lonely pawn situation carefully and traded it for good compensation and brought his knight to D5. Suddendly chess experts became very interested in the game.
Chess grand master Jan Gustafsson tweeted, “Magnus is in big trouble here. 23…Kh8 24.Re7 f5 25.Rxa7 and I’ll give Vishy 75%.”
Polgar wrote in her live blog, ” Magnus has to carefully decide how to proceed. This is an important decision for black.”
It seemed just for a second, Anand had worked out a winning plan in the game, though there was a long fight ahead. Magnus seemed a bit worried and thought for a whole ten minutes before deciding to go ahead and trade his bishop with the white knight.
Full article here: http://www.hindustantimes.com
Anand rocks.