Candidates 2014, Round 12: Anand Draws Closer
Thursday, March 27, 2014 at 11:14PM
Dennis Monokroussos in Candidates 2014, Viswanathan Anand

There are two rounds to go in the Candidates' tournament, and while Viswanathan Anand hasn't won it yet it's pretty close. None of his closest rivals won today, so he continues to lead Levon Aronian by a point (with a better tiebreak, so Aronian needs to outscore Anand by a point and a half) and both Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Sergey Karjakin by a point and a half. Karjakin still has to play Anand, and if he wins he'll have the better tiebreak in case he can make up that extra half a point.

Tomorrow is a rest day, and we'll see what Saturday's pairings look like below. Now for a brief recap of today's round. There was one and only one decisive game, and it saw Veselin Topalov play a very good game against Peter Svidler, defeating him on the white side of a Taimanov Sicilian. Unfortunately for Topalov, all that did was bring him up from sole last place into a four way tie for that dubious distinction at -1.

The two other players (besides Svidler) who came into the round on 50% left it that way, though they went at each other hammer and tongs. Mamedyarov played very aggressively against Karjakin, sacrificing several pawns for a kingside attack. Karjakin took them, but also took an awful lot of time, and by the time he survived the harrowing time pressure his reduced material edge wasn't enough to win.

Levon Aronian and Vladimir Kramnik faced off in an Orthodox Queen's Gambit Declined where nothing much seemed to happen - at least not until Aronian's risky (and dubious) 27.e4. Kramnik went for a repetition, but had he spotted 28... (or 30...) Nb5! 31.exd5 Na5! there might have been a four-way tie on 50%.

Finally, Anand had White against Dmitry Andreikin, and was winning in excellent style. He had some clearer wins, but even in the final position (or actually just before it) he was winning with 41.Rc4! It was a crazy position and it's near the end of a long tournament though, so his decision to bail out with a draw is hard to criticize, as he's still almost impossible to catch.

That said, a potentially huge test faces him on Saturday - probably the last chance for the field to make a race of it.

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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