The ninth game of the FIDE World Championship Match, sponsored by Tamil Nadu state and currently ongoing in Chennai, finished in Magnus Carlsen’s favour after 28 moves of play.
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The defending champion Viswanathan Anand made the first move 1.d4, which was greeted with enthusiastic applause in the playing hall. The challenger and world’s top rated player responded with his trusted Nimzo-Indian defence.
Needing a win to keep the title which has been in his sole possession since 2007, Anand piled on pressure on the young Challenger, Magnus Carlsen, early in the game. Anand repeated the line that he already used in the match with Vladimir Kramnik in Bonn 2008. Black was obviously well prepared, as he made a rare recapture on move 7 (exd5 instead of more common Nxd5) and then immediately closed the queenside with 8…c4. Indian GM Abhijeet Gupta said that the pawn structure demanded that players expand on opposite flanks.
Anand spent around 30 minutes to calculate complicated lines before going all in with 23.Qf4. White went directly for the checkmate and black promoted a new queen on b1. However, playing too quickly Anand erred with 28.Nf1, which effectively concluded the game after Carlsen’s reply 28… Qe1.
“The position was extremely imbalanced. Fear of being mated was there,” said Carlsen speaking after the game in a crowded press conference.
Anand later admitted that playing all out for victory was paramount, “There was not much of choice. I needed to change the course of the match drastically.”
With the score 6-3, Carlsen needs a single draw from the three remaining games to win his maiden world chess title. If he does it he will become the 20th player and first Norwegian in the history of world chess to win the title.
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Photos by JM Mahesh
All out attacking a class player is very risky and Anand paid the price.
This men WC result looks like the women WC – Yifan vs Anna, very one sided !
Magnus will either be too relax now, or Anand will attack or just end the match and loose the title. To win 3 rounds now against Magnus is an impossible task!
Again, a statement that is not honest in this article when it says:
“However, playing too quickly Anand erred with 28.Nf1, which effectively concluded the game after Carlsen’s reply 28… Qe1.”
The problem is that even with Bf1 instead of Nf1, Anand could not mate Carlsen because Carlsen has an option to defend the position with his second queen.
Conclusion: Anand did need a win but he played wrongly for a mat when there was no mat for him to get even if he had played differently!!
Carlsen did say that at the after-match conference when he clearly said that he could not see a mat happening even if Anand was threatening one.
It seems that the articles written from various people often make the mistake of claiming a blunder from Anand when in fact, blunder or not, the position was lost for Anand!!
Even if white did not play Nf1, there was really no clear mating line. That’s why Anand spent a long time before risking it with Qf4. With accurate defense, black would have emerged with material advantage. Of course, a lesser opponent would probably have been mated.
This match and the live commentaries and opinions prove two things:
1. Average 2500, 2600, and even many 2700 grandmasters don’t know chess to the extent that us average Joes think they do. It’s been amazing to see how inexact their analyses have been even when armed with engines. Or maybe Carlsen’s enhanced Karpovian ability is just above the rest of humanity.
2. An Elo rating of 3000 is essentially superhuman and a near impossible feat to achieve, seeing that Carlsen has scored +3 in nine games against a 2770+ opposition but has only gained a meagre 3 Elo points??!!
3. In view of the above two points, it is therefore reasonable to conclude that CHESS IS HARD. Einstein was right in saying it should be pursued only recreationally, not seriously.