Zurich 2015: Nakamura Wins After An Armageddon Win Over Anand
The Zurich Chess Challenge came to an unusual and controversial conclusion today, and in the end Hikaru Nakamura was the winner in an Armageddon game. We'll get back to this, but first, there was a rapid event.
Viswanathan Anand entered the rapid round-robin with a one point lead over Nakamura, a two-point lead over Vladimir Kramnik and a massive three point lead over everyone else. Despite this, he was somewhat fortunate to reach an Armageddon match at all. Anand drew the first game against Kramnik and Nakamura beat Fabiano Caruana, cutting the lead to half a point. In round 2 Anand lost to Levon Aronian, but as Nakamura lost to Kramnik Anand kept his half-point lead over Nakamura while Kramnik closed to within a point. In round 3 Anand beat Caruana while Nakamura drew with Sergey Karjakin, so the gap between them went back to a full point. Kramnik stayed within striking range, catching up to Nakamura by defeating Aronian.
The fourth round was huge for Nakamura. He defeated Anand in their head-to-head game, catching up to him in first place, while Kramnik lost what was at one point a winning position against Karjakin. Nakamura got a second bit of fantastic news after the round: it was suddenly decided that in the event of a first-place tie, the rules that had been agreed upon before the tournament would be thrown out the window. Rather than using Sonneborn-Berger tiebreaks, a tie would be settled by blitz games. As Anand would have won on tiebreaks, this was obviously a boon to Nakamura's chances.
In the last round Kramnik bounced back with a win over Caruana, and he became the winner of the rapid portion of the tournament. That didn't help him win the overall event, however, as the leaders drew: Anand with Karjakin and Nakamura with Aronian.
So it was on to blitz for Anand and Nakamura--or was it? Initially the clocks were set for a 4' + 3" blitz game, and Nakamura was sitting at the board waiting for Anand to show - but he didn't. Nakamura was called away from the board, and some time later he came back, as did Anand, with the clocks reset for an Armageddon game. Anand got five minutes, Nakamura four minutes plus draw odds. Anand probably should have told the organizers to take a flying leap, as his great predecessors Bobby Fischer, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik surely would have done. No doubt he would have done it in a very gracious way, but that is what he should have done. If it's necessary to declare a winner I'm all in favor of playoffs as a way of breaking ties, but this was ridiculous. You simply don't change rules - rules that weren't unfair to begin with - right at the very end of a tournament, especially without the players' prior consent.
Instead, Anand played, and played badly. He chose the same line of the QGD he had used to defeat Magnus Carlsen in game 3 of the last world championship match and to defeat Nakamura in their classical game in the tournament, but the third time wasn't the charm. His plan with 9.g4 was simply bad, and Nakamura was winning while he was still in the opening. Whether his subpar play was due to the poor opening idea or a lack of emotional stability due to the rule change, Anand was mercilessly crushed in 29 moves.
In conclusion, it was yet another very good event for Nakamura, who has gone from success to success the past several months. It was also a good event for Anand, at least as far as the classical portion is concerned, and a nice way to bounce back from the disaster in Baden-Baden. Kramnik also had a reasonable tournament: an undefeated 50% in the classical portion was par for the course, and a win in the rapid should boost his confidence a bit. For the other three players, it was a tournament to forget.
Reader Comments (5)
Various accounts of the turn of events have appeared by now - only the tournament homepage states that "according to the regulations, a single Armageddon blitz game had to decide on the overall winner". Many other sources say that regulations were changed at the last minute, only differing on whether this was OK, acceptable or not. To my knowledge, only chess24 mentions that prize money was split evenly - hence the Armaggedon was a rather meaningless show, and Anand acted accordingly.
Nakamura was called away from the board to "negotiate" with Anand and organizers in another room (without cameras) - so Anand didn't "take a flying leap" but made perfectly clear that he disliked the entire situation.
[DM: Thanks for the info. One clarification about the expression: it's not Anand who would take the flying leap; that's what he would tell the organizers to do. (Which is what I wrote in the post. Sometimes from haste or sloppy editing or sleepiness I goof something up, but not this time.)]
Completely agree with the post Dennis. Re comment by Thomas I would only add that despite the money being split he still missed out on a tournament win. That's something that would hurt a competitor like Anand.
Dennis,
The list of greats you mentioned is relevant and interesting. Spassky would possibly have done the same as Anand. I think either option is all right so long as the decision is taken with internal conviction.
I had goofed up, also because I was unsure about the exact meaning of the phrase. I interpreted it as 'go away' - when Anand telling the organizers to go away or Anand just going away would be de facto the same thing. But "take a flying leap" is somewhat rude - stronger versions more obvious to a non-native speaker wouldn't be child-friendly!?
[DM: I meant to use a rude expression, as changing the rules when they did is absolutely inappropriate.]
Anand said on twitter that he was not upset about the tie break rules. You can read the tweet in reverse order:
Viswanathan Anand @vishy64theking · Feb 23
and this would not have been possible if the conditions of play were not excellent .
Now for some humpty dumpty time with akhil (6/6)
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Viswanathan Anand @vishy64theking · Feb 23
The rules in this case were fair Personally I was very happy to have that I was able to play good chess in Zurich (5/6)
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Viswanathan Anand @vishy64theking · Feb 23
forums without checking the actual facts . As a sportsperson we play according to the rules of the game and accept the results . (4/6)
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Viswanathan Anand @vishy64theking · Feb 23
The only thing I was angry was my own play in the rapid . I am quite surprised that people have been spreading rumors on various (3/6)
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Viswanathan Anand @vishy64theking · Feb 23
Nice to b back after a good event. I was quite surprised 2 know that people on ,social media & websites have implied that I was (1/6)