Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Amazing game

What an amazing game..a world championship game decided in 17 moves. That the move 14...Qf6 was a blunder was not predicted even by GM's doing live commentary. They realized it only after Anand played 17. Qf2, which Gelfand admitted that he did not see. Anand said that he calculated the complete line when he played the moves of 11.exf5 and 12.g4. It is simply amazing because in out-of-box games, Anand seems simply unbeatable, like what he did to Kramnik in 2008.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't know much about chess, but that queen trap was really cool.

Good Game Anand!

Anonymous said...

If only i could beat PyChess (Linux) in level 4 more consistently. :(

Ok, Back to research work now :)

Anonymous said...

I don't think the queen is lost. Probably, Giri can clarify.

I know that Giri was a state player and has played against Anand long time back...

Anonymous said...

oh yes, the queen was definitely gone. That's why Gelfand gave up the game. You can simply do permutations and combinations for both the white and black pieces to figure that out.
But Queen + Horse i thought will be equal to 2 rooks for Boris. Maybe Prof Giri can enlighten more on this.

Vijay Sethuraman said...

To the 11:55 Anon:

The queen is not 'definitely' lost but black would have to give up material to save his queen. For example, the line 17...Nc6 18.dc Qc6 allows black to keep his queen but the position is hopeless.

Vishy's simple threat was Be3 for which Gelfand had no adequate defense.

For good commentaries on this game, please see http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8175

Giri@iisc said...

Queen is not lost as you can play
17..Nc6. Any move by white's bishop will lead to 18..Nd4+ 19.Kd3 Qf3+ with black winning.

17..Nc6 has to be countered with 18.dxc6 Qc6 leading to one rook for a bishop and knight. On paper, this look plausible. However, at Anand's level, the game is hopeless.

The game will evolve like this,

17.Qf2 Nc6 18.dxc6 Qxc6 19.Bg2
19…Qc8 20.Rf1 Qf5+ 21.Qxf5 gxf5 22.Rxf5
and white wins.

Simple lesson: Never play contact chess with Fischer, Kasparov or Anand. They are too good.

Best regards

Giridhar

Anonymous said...

What is contact chess?

Giri@iisc said...

contact chess is wild and tactical as opposed to calculated positional and strategy based.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to trouble Prof Giri but how does white win after 22.Rxf5
It would basically be rook+knight+bishop v/s 2 rooks right?

Didn't get that part. Thanks again for the explanation though.

Giri@iisc said...

It is not just the material but the position.

You can look at similar variations. Look at the houdini's analysis at

http://moscow2012.fide.com/en/live?g=20120521

Go directly to the last move. The best move of Nc6 will lead to +1.48.

Usually, any position with more than 0.5 (+0.5 or -0.5) will lead to a winner at the GM level.