World Championship, Game 5: Carlsen Holds Easily With Black
Game 5 of the world championship match between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen was the first real dud of the series. Anand again opened with 1.d4, and Carlsen switched lines once again, opting this time for the solid Queen's Indian. For once he wasn't surprised and seemed to be the better-prepared player. Anand did achieve a slight edge, but he couldn't figure out what to do with it. After thinking for a while he played 27.Rb7, which was in effect a surrender: the remaining moves were played a tempo and the game was drawn a dozen moves and about five moves later.
The match is tied 2.5-2.5, but Carlsen will have good chances to seize the match initiative as he gets White in the next two games (first tomorrow and then on Monday). The game, with light notes, is here; subscribers' deeper coverage will be emailed later.
Reader Comments (4)
Dennis, do you think letting Carlsen off the hook so easily was a mistake similar to the beginning of last year's match? It seemed Svidler was quite puzzled when commenting this live.
[DM: I do. I can't believe that Anand doesn't know that doing this is a suboptimal strategy, so maybe it just shows how difficult it is for all of us to overcome our habits.]
Anand used a lot of time for a position he implied he had prepared fairly deeply in the press conference. That's a sign of nervousness more than anything else, which is both normal and dangerous in a world championship match. I would expect 1. Nf3 or 1. d4 from Magnus, as I doubt he wants to spend the rest of his White games playing Anti-Sicilians with ...e6, and he definitely doesn't want to risk Anand's preparation in the Sicilian proper.
[DM: I'm not sure about the nervousness explanation. He does seem nervous at times, but in this case he also implied that the preparation was done a long time ago, so he probably had to reconstruct his knowledge. He had plenty of time left when he had to make the critical decisions on moves 26 and 27 and had played very well up to that point.
I think your opening guess is right, and expect something other than 1.e4 from here on out until he gets the lead in the match.]
Note to Dennis: "surrender" means "give up."
[DM: Note to Niles: Correct, but a player can surrender (= give up) something other than the game. For instance, one (e.g. Anand, in this game) could give up trying to win, which was what I had in mind. Or one could surrender material, the center, space, the initiative, the match as a whole, etc. In many contexts one makes explicit what is being surrendered, but it isn't always necessary to do so. Perhaps I should have done that in this case, however.]
About "letting Carlsen off the hook" too fast.
Espescially Anand, as the much older player has to spare his energy for the right moments. The main advantage of beeing 20 years younger, may be to recover much faster from a long exhausting game.
In that case, the question for Anand was: is it worth, spending 2-3 more hours for torturing Carlsen with the very probable outcome of a draw. Then, playing black right the next day, being a bit more tired, knowing that Carlsen will play on for hours when feeling the slightest advantage, Anand's decision might be psychologically doubtful, but strategically understandable.
[DM: I understand your thinking, but here's the flip side: if you don't play out this position, what do you play out? Game 3 was wonderful for Anand, but he's almost never going to get that kind of advantage. That was the only time in 15 match games where he obtained a serious advantage in the opening/early middlegame - probably longer if you count their classical tournament games. You have to push your advantage when you can, and this was not a trivial advantage but a real one. It wasn't huge, but it wasn't meaningless either.]