Anand’s hand in Euro chess leagues
Posted On Wednesday, April 01, 2009
World champion Viswanathan Anand is a pioneer in Indian chess in many ways. Apart from his deeds on the board and his role in popularising chess in India, he has also played his part in getting other GMs to play in various European chess leagues.
In the 1990s, Anand played in the Yugoslav league for Agrouniverzal, where he and his recent World championship challenger Vladimir Kramnik were teammates. Agrouniverzal dominated the European Chess League during that period.
The Indian then moved to OSC Baden-Baden in the German Bundesliga where he has been for almost 10 years now.
Anand’s presence in the European league must have certainly influenced players such as Krishnan Sasikiran, Pentala Harikrishna, Koneru Humpy and Sandipan Chanda to try their luck there as well. Sasikiran and Humpy played in the French league while Chanda had played in the Bundesliga for a couple of seasons.
The Bundesliga and the French chess leagues offer good returns for Grandmasters. They get paid according to the number of games they play and also according to their ratings. Anand commands a good appearance package and generally the pay-per-game is in excess of 1,000 euros (around Rs 70,000).
Last weekend, Anand dashed off to Germany from Nice after finishing his Amber tournament to play for his club, Baden-Baden and helped them win their fourth Schachbundesliga title in a row with 88 points. Baden-Baden trounced Aljechin Solingen 6-2 last weekend. With a four-point margin the club virtually sealed its title and another 6-2 win on Sunday against SV Wattenscheid helped them widen the gap with rest of the field.
World Champion, Anand, played only two games of the season for Baden-Baden because he was busy with his World championship against Kramnik when the league started in October. He played on Saturday and Sunday last and won both of them.
The Baden-Baden team, apart from Anand, had Peter Heine Nielsen (Anand’s second), Peter Svidler, Michael Adams and Pentala Harikrishna in the ranks.
In the last two rounds of the Schachbundesliga, Baden-Baden needed only two points. Anand beat Dutchman Daniel Stellwagen with black in the ‘poisoned pawn’ variation of the Sicilian Najdorf. and then played white against Polish GM Barthalomew Macieja of Wattenscheid on Sunday. He won comfortably.
Source: http://www.centralchronicle.com/
Did he break 2800 again?
No, he did not. Anyway, the article is stupid or, at best, superficial.
First, it is implied as though a team consisted of five members only (only Svidler, Nielsen, Adams and Harikrishna are mentioned) though in fact it is eight.
Secondly, Anand did NOT win comfortably. In his game against Stellwagen he had to fight a long, tough game and only won because his opponent blundered at the end.
It is really sad to see that articles on chess are written by people who obviously have no knowledge of chess. Or maybe they just do not care.
No he did not. He went up by 5 points to 2788. You can look at the live ratings
No he did not. He went up by 5 points. He is at 2788 now. You can look at the live ratings.
To anon – No,he did not. Anyway …
nothing wrong with the article but your English! It mentioned that Anand beat Stellwagen and that he beat Polish GM Macieja comfortably.
Got it?