Surprise, Surprise: Game 12 A Short Draw; Anand-Gelfand Go To Tiebreaks On Wednesday
Monday, May 28, 2012 at 10:23AM It's not the first world championship match to finish (or at least finish the "classical" portion) in a draw. This already happened in Lasker-Schlechter (1910), Botvinnik-Bronstein (1951), Botvinnik-Smyslov (1954), Kasparov-Karpov (1987), Karpov-Anand (1997; though I won't object to those who don't want to call that a real world championship), Kramnik-Leko (2004) and Kramnik-Topalov + Danailov + FIDE arbiters (2006). And now, it has happened for an eighth time.
The game got off to a promising start for spectators hoping for blood, or at least a full-blooded battle. In game 10 Boris Gelfand had refuted, practically speaking, the line 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 e6 4.Bxc6 bxc6 5.b3 with the great idea 5...e5! If White doesn't take, Black gets a beautiful center and kills White's remaining bishop, while if White does take - as happened in the game - Black regains the pawn starting with 6...Qe7, and is doing well there too.
So Viswanathan Anand made a nice adjustment in this game. He started with 5.d3, and after 5...Ne7 now played 6.b3. Here 6...e5 simply loses a pawn for nothing, so Gelfand needed another plan. This time, he didn't have one prepared at home, and he started burning time prodigiously: 16 minutes on 6...d6, and then after 7.e5 Ng6 he had to deal with another interesting idea that was part of the champion's preparation: the pawn sacrifice 8.h4. Gelfand took the pawn: 8...Nxe5 9.Nxe5 dxe5, and then Anand played 10.Nd2 to stop ...c4.
Here Gelfand thought for a long time - around 35-40 minutes - and uncorked 10...c4 all the same! Rather than suffer a pawn up with a weak queenside and bad bishops, he sacrificed two pawns (leaving him one down) to fix his structure, gain a nice center and activate both bishops. Soon it was Anand who needed to be concerned about keeping things under control.
Unfortunately for Gelfand, and typically for both players in this match, it seemed that once they had done their "duty" with the black pieces and proved equality, it was then time to call it a day. Gelfand didn't try to press his potential initiative and may have even gotten a touch careless at the end when he played 20...a5 rather than 20...Rhc8. Now although the position remained a very likely draw, White could at least play on without any worries. Instead, after 20...a5 Anand played 21.Bc5 Rhd8 22.Bxe7 and offered a draw, which, needless to say, was immediately accepted.
That the position should be a draw is very likely, and the computers concur that White's advantage - if it exists - is minimal. But as White could play without the slightest risk, and enjoyed a big time advantage (56 minutes to 16, the latter number being the more significant one) it would seem the natural thing to continue. Vladimir Kramnik, who was commenting on the official site, found this "unexplainable", except to say that Anand couldn't handle the tension of the last game. He added that this was "one of the strangest decisions" he ever saw in a world championship match, confessing that he was "shocked": "I don't understand anything....It's a complete present for Boris."
Hyperbole or not, the game and the regular portion of the match have been drawn, and so on Wednesday we'll move on to rapid (and faster) tiebreaks. Here's what will happen, starting - unfortunately - at 12 local time in Moscow/9:00 in the morning CET/4 a.m. Eastern Time in the U.S. and Canada.
1st try: Best of four rapid games (25' + 10").
2nd try: Best of two blitz games (5' + 3"); if it's tied after two games this procedure will be repeated up to four more times. (In other words, a maximum of 10 blitz games/5 blitz mini-matches.)
3rd and final try: Armageddon: White gets 5 minutes and Black 4, with no increment until move 61 when the players will get an additional 3 seconds per move. White must win, otherwise Black wins the match.
Here, it must be said, the previous head-to-head stats paint a grim picture for the challenger. In previous rapid games (which probably includes the blindfold games from the Amber events) Anand has a big plus: +8 -1 =19, and in blitz the champ enjoys a +3 =4 record against Gelfand. Still, Gelfand's preparation has been excellent, so it's not inconceivable that he could hold his games with Black in rapid chess and pull a single rabbit out of his hat with White. We shall see!
One thing we can expect (I hope!) is an absence of short draws. Seven of the 12 games were drawn in fewer than 30 moves, five in fewer than 26 moves. It's not that the games have lacked content, but all the same, the players are giving each other too much credit, assuming that after they've leapt the initial set of hurdles they'll finish the game just as strongly. In rapid chess, that "courtesy" is likely to be thrown out the window, and good riddance!
(Subscribers: As usual, I hope and expect to have the materials ready for you tonight. But pity me come Wednesday! Non-subscribers can still sign up and get all the earlier work.)
Reader Comments (14)
I thought the last game of Kramnik-Leko was a victory for Kramnik, no?
[DM: The last game was a victory that let him draw the match, and so he kept the title - there were no rapid tiebreaks.]
Please disregard my last post. It is still early for me and I misread what you wrote. D'oh!
Dear Dennis,
ευχαριστώ for a very inspired report on today´s game and for the preview on Wednesday. Maybe the penalties will make up for the slightly dull match so far? We will see.
I especially liked your description of the 2006 match: Kramnik - Topalov + Danailov + FIDE arbiters .... :-)
Greeting to Greece!
Olaf
Many of the chess greats have worked hard on their physical training in order to stay sharp over the course of an intense several-hour struggle. Fischer swam a lot, Kasparov ran 5 miles a day, and Carlsen spends a lot of time running hard on treadmills.
Anand and Gelfand, on the other hand....at a glance you can tell that these guys are going to take every opportunity to conserve their energy.
[DM: Don't forget about Gelfand's altitude training!]
You mentioned Lasker-Schlechter and the Botvinnik matches. In those good old days the rule was that the champion keeps his title in case of a drawn match. This makes sense in my opinion: It's the challenger who has to prove that he deserves the title. After all they play for the world championship, not the world rapid championship. The candidates matches have been rightly criticized for producing too many short draws. Unfortunately Vishy now follows the same strategy, relying on his supposedly superior skill in rapid. This may backfire however, and we will have a champion who has just been "lucky" in rapid or even blitz.
I know there will be plenty of haters - but this was a superb effort. Gelfand's 10...c4! was excellently timed and he reacted impeccably to the pressure of a new idea in the final game.
perhaps Anand should have pushed a little more but still its a "deep concept" gem.
If the match goes to the Armageddon game the subscribers will be getting more than their money's worth on Wednesday! :)
Love your description of the 2006-Match in Elista :-)
This may not be the first World Championship to end in a draw but they are surely breaking the record for averaging the least number of moves played per game?
May be Grishchuk has set up a new trend here. Draw the classical games and go straight to the rapid roulette.
Thus far, I have found the match uninteresting for the most part. However, I did draw one bit of inspiration from it for a particular situation. I was playing in a tournament a few days after game 5 and, having glanced over the ideas in that game, I decided to try the 11.c4 line vs. the Sveshnikov in the last round of the event here. I lost the game, but I did have the satisfaction of achieving a perfectly good position from the opening against a strong master opponent.
Regarding drawn matches, Lasker-Schlechter is a pretty twisted example as it seems +1 would not have been sufficient for Schlechter to become the world champion. He pressed in the last game to achieve +2 (in a 10 games match) and lost. Imagine what we would write now had Lasker kept his title with a defeat, each discussion of drawn matches and draw odds would have to end with this caveat.
Now as the match has attracted a lot of criticism/sarcasm, I would like to add that I liked it as a casual viewer. Most of the draws, even 20-30 moves draws, kept me interested, and the match picked up in the second half. I saw there was less heat on the Internet forums, and matches with Topalov provoked fiercer debates between supporters of both sides. This time the champions were more similar to each other and the debate was more between the Anand-Gelfand lovers and the Anand-Gelfand haters/critics. Perhaps this kind opposition is to be expected more often in the future if the final regularly fails to star the fan-favourites.
[DM: There has been a ton of controversy about the Lasker-Schlechter match, but the last time I checked on the controversy the best evidence seems to be against the +2 hypothesis.]
The press conferences have asked whether opening preparation is leading to a future World Champ being the best memorizer. In theory this is nonsense, but if you're going to agree a draw in every even position after ~20 moves then its going to become true. The short draws are quite dispiriting.
It also makes a mockery of the rapid tiebreak. A Challenger shouldn't be able to beat the Champion by drawing with them. This applies to every mano-on-mano sports from jousting in the days of King Arthur through to boxing today.
[DM: About the rapid tiebreak, they would need be even after 27 total games, with Gelfand drawing the Armageddon game with Black, in order for your worry to come true. Pretty unlikely. As for being the champion being the best memorizer, it's part of the story but not even close to the whole thing. In this match, for instance, we've already seen big novelties on moves 5 and 6!]
Interesting point to ponder, Dennis; like most chess fans in recent years (myself included) you've been generally pro-Anand and anti-Nakamura in terms of their overall attitude, statements and behavior (your recent post on the 'Playing With Nakamura' book very much confirms this). Might this present match serve to sully Anand's reputation somewhat? Can you imagine Naka playing such a high-profile match in this manner?
At the end of the day, fighting chess will live on in the memory WAY longer than being a decent chap...
[DM: You may be confusing two things: playing fighting chess and being abrasive. The former does not require the latter.]
I'm so sick of people calling the games boring.
Why does everything have to be primitive, razzle dazzle, fireworks, hyper aggressive and chaotic to be entertaining?
What does this say about these people ? Are they 5 years old?
Just admit you don't understand and cant enjoy the subtleties of positional chess and go play bullet chess.