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.)