Zurich 2015, Round 2: Anand Beats Aronian With Great Preparation (UPDATED)
The games between Vladimir Kramnik and Hikaru Nakamura and between Sergey Karjakin and Fabiano Caruana were both drawn, and while each had their moments the big game of round 2 in Zurich was between Viswanathan Anand and Levon Aronian. In their classical matchups Aronian has enjoyed a big plus score, most recently winning just eight days ago in the Grenke Chess Classic, but Anand has won the most important and the most spectacular games. (Important games: Mexico City 2007 and the Candidates' in 2014; spectacular games: Wijk aan Zee 2013 and to a lesser degree today's game.)
Today's victory was the product of some outstanding opening preparation, almost surely done in the wake of his draw with Magnus Carlsen in game 10 of last year's world championship match. Aronian does play the occasional Gruenfeld, and after this game the amount of time he takes before trying it again is likely to increase. To his credit, Aronian's first five moves or so after the surprise were very good ones; his misfortune is that he needed to find a bunch more to come through safe and sound. Inevitably he erred, and Anand was able to finish things up at the board very quickly.
That puts Anand into a tie for first with Nakamura with three points each after two rounds (they're using 2-1-0 scoring for the classical games; the subsequent rapid games will be scored in the usual way, with the overall totals tallied to determine a winner); there are three rounds to go. Tomorrow's pairings are as follows:
- Aronian (1) - Kramnik (2)
- Caruana (1) - Anand (3)
- Nakamura (3) - Karjakin (2)
I've analyzed the games, but the ChessBase online viewer is down (and has been for over a day); I'll post my analysis once it's back up. (UPDATE: It's back up, and the games are here.)
Also of note: Viktor Korchnoi and Wolfgang Uhlmann played a two-game rapid match. The quality was low for the great players they once were (in Korchnoi's case, this wasn't long ago at all), but pretty high for players who will be 84 and 80, respectively, this March. Both players won with the white pieces; Uhlmann first and Korchnoi second.
Reader Comments (2)
"Aronian's first five moves or so after the surprise were very good ones" - I count to four but they are all connected: 15.-Bxc3 giving up the dark-squared bishop only makes sense if he then collects the piece, 18.-Ra4 is the only way to keep the extra piece. Apparently Aronian told Anand after the game that this and also 19.d7! was also his preparation - but then he couldn't remember what his notes said, spent lots of time and played inferior moves.
[DM: While 15.Bf4 was the novelty, 14.Be3 had only been played in five earlier games, so I started my count from there.]
Somewhat reminiscent of Topalov-Anand 1-0, first game of the Anand-Topalov WCh match: also a sharp Grunfeld - Anand had black, followed his preparation but then went astray (here he may have mixed up the move order). Two things matter in modern opening preparation: 1) doing it, 2) remembering it over the board.
From the post-game conference by Anand (in German!), he seems to indicate that this research was dating back to around 18-20 years ago, when he was using Fritz3. And that he recently looked at it with a stronger computer. As this line has been played in the Karpov-Kasparov Seville match I guess it was not entirely unfamiliar territory even before Sochi.
[DM: Yes, but that's 14.Bf4. That goes back to the Seville match, as you say, but 14.Be3 had only been played in five previous games, none of which were GM-GM clashes.]