Greed is good
By Malcolm Pein
Last Updated: 12:01am BST
06/09/2008
Veselin Topalov emerged as the new leader of the 400,000 Euro Grand Slam Final in Bilbao as he tempted the teenage prodigy Magnus Carlsen into an over-optimistic pawn sacrifice and then demonstrated the art of chess materialism.
Topalov’s play was very impressive as he smoothly exchanged into the endgame, centralised his king and prepared to advance his majority on the queenside. It was all textbook stuff. Carlsen had one chance to regain the pawn but would still have been slightly worse but after he rejected this he was given no further opportunities to save himself.
With Black’s extra pawn set to advance Carlsen gave up another but could not delay the inevitable for long and he resigned on move 56.
Here is the full article.
Topalov is back to his old form. Now only if Kramnik and Anand could do the same.