Tal Memorial, Round 5: Anand Catches Kramnik

It was another draw-heavy round, and the world champion exploited this to rejoin his vanquished predecessor in first place. In the ever popular Anti-Moscow Gambit, Viswanathan Anand dropped an atom bomb on the non-birdlike Peter Leko. Leko defended well against 22.Nxd4(!!), but while it seemed at first glance that he equalized, Anand's quiet 30th move left Black in a surprisingly helpless position. The best Leko could do was to reach a queen and rook ending a pawn down with a bad king, and he resigned shortly after the time control.

If Kramnik had beaten Gelfand with Black, he'd have maintained clear first. He came close, and might have been winning at one point, but couldn't quite pull it off. Another "if" goes for Aronian - Morozevich. Had White won that game, he'd have caught Anand and Kramnik in first, but on the White side of a Semi-Slav turned Dutch he wasn't able to parlay his small edge into anything serious.

In the other games, Svidler - Ponomariov was a successful Berlin Defense for Black - a comfortable draw, while Ivanchuk - Carlsen was a dull London system (but I repeat myself) against Black's King's Indian setup. White got nothing, and the players agreed to a draw before they died of boredom.

Standings After Round 5:

1-2. Kramnik, Anand 3½

3. Aronian 3

4-7. Carlsen, Ponomariov, Gelfand, Ivanchuk 2½ (each with five draws)

8. Morozevich 2

9-10. Svidler, Leko 1½

Round 6 Pairings:

Kramnik - Ponomariov

Leko - Svidler

Carlsen - Anand

Morozevich - Ivanchuk

Gelfand - Aronian

Today's games, with my comments, are here.

Comments

[Icepick]

Ivanchuk - Carlsen was a dull London system (but I repeat myself) against Black's King's Indian setup. White got nothing, and the players agreed to a draw before they died of boredom.

But did the audience survive?

[Richard W]

Hi Dennis,

I see both here and on chessbase.com 22.Nxd4 is being reported as a novelty but it appears this has been played before in Schwenk-Auzins, 8th Baltic Sea Tournament 1/3/08 (drawn in 41moves). That game continued 22...cxd4 23.Re6 Rf6. Do you think Anand would have known about this too or did he (or his seconds) come up with it the idea independently?

[Dennis Monokroussos]

Very interesting, Richard! Where did you find the game? I don't honestly know if Anand knew about that game. On the one hand, I'd expect them (or their seconds) to know about all the games we know about and can find, when it's part of their preparation; on the other, Leko didn't seem to know or expect the move, and if the earlier game were easily found I'd expect him to have had a look at it. So your guess is as good as mine, and at this moment, probably better.

[Richard W]

Here is the complete game for reference:

[Event "8th Baltic Sea Team Tournament"]
[Site "ICCF"]
[Date "2008.03.01"]
[White "Schwenck, Mathias"]
[Black "Auzinš, Maris"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[ECO "D43"]
[WhiteElo "2415"]
[BlackElo "2452"]
[PlyCount "81"]
[WhiteTeam "Germany-4"]
[BlackTeam "Latvia"]

1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 e6 5. Bg5 h6 6. Bh4 dxc4 7. e4 g5 8. Bg3 b5
9. Be2 Bb7 10. O-O Nbd7 11. Ne5 Bg7 12. Nxd7 Nxd7 13. Bd6 a6 14. a4 e5 15. Bg4
exd4 16. e5 c5 17. Re1 Nxe5 18. Bxe5 O-O 19. Bxg7 Kxg7 20. Ne2 f5 21. Bh5 f4
22. Nxd4 cxd4 23. Re6 Rf6 24. Qe1 Bd5 25. Re7+ Kg8 26. axb5 Qd6 27. h3 axb5 28.
Rxa8+ Bxa8 29. Re8+ Rf8 30. Rxf8+ Qxf8 31. Qe6+ Kh8 32. Qe5+ Qg7 33. Qxb5 c3
34. bxc3 dxc3 35. Qe8+ Qg8 36. Qe5+ Qg7 37. Qe6 c2 38. Qc8+ Qg8 39. Qc3+ Qg7
40. Qxc2 Bd5 41. Qf5 1/2-1/2

Quite an obscure correspondence game but I guess the top players will be watching these too nowdays to find new innovations. I wonder what else the world of correspondence chess will spring on us :)

[Dennis Monokroussos]

Thanks for supplying the game, even if you're still keeping your source a secret. :)

[Richard W]

Hehe sorry Dennis, not really a secret as tbh I'm not sure where I got it from. I gather together games from various places and put them all in a big database then lose the originals. As it's an ICCF game though it quite probably is from their own online games archive. I would guess that the top players follow some of these games as I imagine the top correspondence players can develop some interesting opening theory.

Thanks for your comments above, as a mere patzer I find the depth of modern opening knowledge amazing and am quite interested in what the workload and methods must be like at the cutting edge. It seems modern technology has changed the game quite dramatically (for better or worse is another topic entirely :P).