Press release
BLACK HAVE GREATER SAFETY MARGIN
The second game of the match for the title FIDE world chess champion was played in the Engineering Building of the State Tretyakov Gallery on 11 May. The players explained at the press conference why they had quickly agreed to a draw.
Commenting on the game, World Champion Viswanathan Anand noted, “It seemed to me that the white were slightly better off after the opening, but following a precise response by the black the position was close to equal. With any other move, my pieces would not have had the best positions on the field”. The world champion considered the possibility of saving the bishop, but after thinking about it, he reached the end game with a knight against the bishop as this position seemed safe to him. In the final position (the opponents agreed to a draw on the twenty-fifth move), black had a greater safety margin.
Boris Gelfand agreed that his advantage following the opening was more of a symbolic nature, but at the same time he managed to maintain the tension and create problems for his opponent. “To battle for the advantage, I needed to retain one rook with a bishop against a rook with a knight in a very advantageous position, but I was unable to do this”. Both players agreed that after the fourteenth move the black were in a critical position.
Asked if he would have continued to play today if the rules had stipulated the need to play another game of rapid chess (similar to the match in Zurich), the challenger noted, “I think that all the talk about these or other rules is coming from the incorrect assumption that the chess players are lazy slackers who want to deprive people of a show. I do not agree with this view”.
A digicast and photo reports from the press conference are available on the official World Chess Championship website at http://moscow2012.fide.com/
The FIDE World Chess Championship match between the world champion Viswanathan Anand (India) and the challenger Boris Gelfand (Israel) will take place from 10 to 31 May 2012 in the Engineering Building of the State Tretyakov Gallery. Chess championship match will be taking place in one of the world’s biggest museums for the first time. Organisers of the match are FIDE (the World Chess Federation) and the RCF (the Russian Chess Federation).
Initiator of the idea of holding the match in Moscow and its sponsor is the Russian entrepreneur Andrei Filatov (joint owner of the N-Trans Group). Other sponsors of the contest include businessman Gennady Timchenko and the Ladoga charitable foundation, and also the NVisionGroup, Novatek and Almaz-Antei companies.
Contact information for journalists:
Mark Glukhovsky
Press Attaché for the Russian Chess Federation
at the World Championship Match
Gelfand is great.