Zurich, Finale: Nakamura Takes First Over Anand on Tiebreak
It was an exciting three-man race in Zurich, with Hikaru Nakamura, Viswanathan Anand, and Vladimir Kramnik all finishing the tournament undefeated. The first five rounds were "rapid-classical": 40' + 10", and the games counted double: two points for a win, one for a draw, and the usual zero for a loss. This was followed by a blitz round-robin with traditional scoring. Anand started 2-0, but drew his last three rapid games and was caught in round five by Nakamura. Their +2 scores gave them 7/10, good for a one-point lead over Kramnik, who only won one game.
In the blitz, both Anand and Kramnik went +2 in the first four rounds, while Nakamura only went +1. Going into the last round, therefore, Anand led Nakamura by half a point and Kramnik by a full point, and with Kramnik getting White against Anand in the last round a three-way tie for first was a possibility, provided that Kramnik won and Nakamura drew with Levon Aronian. It didn't happen. Kramnik had White, but Anand was better prepared and equalized with ease, while Aronian was unable to hold a difficult double rook ending against Nakamura.
So just like last year, Anand and Nakamura finished tied for first. Last year, the tournament was supposed to end at that point, and had it done so they would have been co-champions or Anand would have won on tiebreak. Instead, Anand was cajoled into an Armageddon playoff with Nakamura, which he lost, and Nakamura took the title. This time it was Nakamura who wound up with the better tiebreakers, and while there were some rumors about another last-minute playoff getting set up, Anand was apparently not interested and settled for silver.
They both finished with 10.5/15, a point ahead of Kramnik. After that there was a yawning abyss of a gap, with Anish Giri and Aronian finishing with 5.5 points apiece and Alexei Shirov coming in last with just 3.5.
The games (unannotated, alas) are here.
What's next in super-GM land? The pickings are pretty slim for the next month: there are some leagues and the Aeroflot Open at the start of March, but the next really big tournament is the biggest of them all: the Candidates' tournament starting March 10. Four of the players from Zurich (Nakamura, Anand, Giri and Aronian) will be participating there, but it would be a mistake to draw any serious conclusions based on this event, with the possible exception of Anand's performance. To my mind, this shows that Gibraltar was a one-off, and he will be psychologically ready next month.