2012 World Championship, Game 6: Drawn Again
Six games, six draws. It has been far from the most exciting world championship in history, but it wasn't such a bad game today. (I don't mean that it was exciting in any conventional sense, but it continued long enough to make the draw obvious to most spectators.) Champion Viswanathan Anand repeated his Semi-Slav/Chebanenko hybrid, and it was Boris Gelfand who deviated first with 6.Qc2. This is also a popular try, and of course Anand had prepared deeply for this move as well. His 14...0-0 looks like a strong novelty, sacrificing the isolated d-pawn but leaving White poorly coordinated as a result.
Indeed, Gelfand's solution was very reasonable: he returned the pawn to develop harmoniously; in particular, his bishop on c3 was very well placed. That forced Anand to continue to defend accurately, and he did. After 29 moves the resulting single-rook ending was completely drawn, and so the players called it a day.
The players have another rest day (they must be exhausted by now), and on Sunday Gelfand will once again have the white pieces. Meanwhile, I still have work to do for my subscribers, who can look forward to my analysis and video coverage later today.
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