Magnus Carlsen Is In Great Shape After Game 1 Of The World Chess Championship
MATTHEW DEBORD
NOV 9, 2014, 03.54 AM
Game 1 of the 2014 World Chess Championship was played on Saturday and ended in a draw.
I know that sounds boring, but it was a fascinating draw and should set the tone for the rest of the match.
Current World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway and challenger Vishy Anand of India both left the board with half a point.
The match consists of 12 regular games (with tiebreaks as needed) and runs through the end of the month. It’s being played in Sochi, Russia.
You never know what to expect at events like this. Carlsen is the world number one and Anand is number six, Carlsen is 23 and Anand in 44, and Carlsen is rated at 2863, while Anand is at 2792. Carlsen took the title from Anand convincingly in 2013. He should win.
Unlike last year, when the players started with a fairly quick and rather boring draw, this year’s Game 1 was an engrossing example of elite Super-Grandmaster chess (although for the rematch, Anand got to start with the white pieces). It consumed 48 moves, numerous hours, and was a great display of attacking and defending at the highest level.
A QUICK BIT ABOUT OPENINGS
First, a quick bit about the most popular first moves in chess, even for top players. If you already know all about this stuff, just skip down to the recap.
The first moves set up what’s called the “opening” – the critical initial 10-15 moves of the game. Most amateurs and even many professionals open by moving the pawn in front of their king two squares forward. In algebraic chess notation, this is called “e4” and that’s how a player will write it on his or her scoresheet. It’s also known as a “King’s Pawn” game. Anand, a smooth player who can bring powerful, attacking chess to the board seemingly at will, has often played e4 – aggressive players love to play e4 because it achieves a chess fundamental, staking a claim to the center, and supports another fundamental, creating a line for the light-squared bishop to be developed while preparing the white king for castling.
But it also sets up some excellent attacking chances for white.
Unfortunately, e4 can lead to an opening called the “Berlin Defense,” now often called the “Berlin Wall” because at the Grandmaster level, it gives black a great chance to secure a draw. This was a problem for Anand last year; he couldn’t break through the Berlin Wall in the three games in which it arose, even losing one game as white. The premier GM opening these days that evolves from e4 is the famous Ruy Lopez, or “Spanish Game,” which has been around for centuries – and sadly in 2013 the Berlin Defense took the teeth out of it.
THE GRUNFELD!
So Anand opened with d4 instead. This is the other popular pawn opening: the pawn in front of the white queen is moved forward two squares, and unsurprisingly when not called “d4” the opening is referred as a “Queen’s Pawn” game. Unlike e4, which claims a piece of the center with an undefended pawn, d4 aims for center control with a pawn that’s defended by its queen from the get-go.
Anand opened with the move d4.
Carlsen responded by moving his knight to the f6 square. The following sequence of moves led to an opening called the “Grunfeld Defense,” named after the early 20th century Grandmaster Ernst Grunfeld of Austria, who popularized it. The Grunfeld has become one of the top replies to d4 in modern GM play. It was supercool to see it rolled out by Carlsen, who isn’t known for playing it all that much – his idea seemed to be to confuse Anand, but as we’ll see, Anand had a trick up his sleeve.
The Grunfeld Defense: 1. e4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. nc3 d5
It was also cool to see the Grunfeld because the Russian GM Peter Svidler (world #18) is providing commentary for the official WCC webcast (Game 1 is archived here), and he’s a total Grunfeld geek – an expert in the opening. Plus, while I’m very, very far from a master chess player, I play the Grunfeld as black (if I can) pretty much exclusively against d4, so I felt that I could follow along pretty easily for the first 10-15 moves or so.
The main idea with the Grunfeld is for black to let white have a lot (but not total) center control but to work later to undermine it. As such, it’s what’s know as a “hypermodern” opening, but as you can see from the diagram above, it doesn’t allow white to build up an utterly imposing center because the pawn comes to d5 (preventing white from playing e4 unopposed) to complete the characteristic opening sequence.
GAME 1 RECAP
Enough with the technical analysis and opening theory: What went down in the game after we established that it would be the Grunfeld?
Anand briefly confused Carlsen – or at least made him spend 15 minutes thinking about an obvious move – by countering Carlsen’s Grunfeld with a single offbeat move that proved he knew what Magnus was up to. Susan Polgar, one of the strongest female GMs in the world, in her commentary suggested that Anand, who is comfortable in the Grunfeld, threw Carlsen a curveball to test his preparation.
Carlsen missed it.