As the popular phrase goes, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” But in a match for the World chess title, the sooner you get even, the better it gets.
On Tuesday, how much better Viswanathan Anand was feeling on avenging Sunday’s defeat to World champion Magnus Carlsen could be gauged by the return of his customary, disarming smile. By hitting back with white pieces in Game 3 of the 12-game World championship match in Sochi, Russia, Anand has levelled the score to 1.5-1.5.
Psychologically, Anand has gained a little more.
So how did Anand, looking for his first victory over Classical format since December 2010 turn it around to bring his head-to-head record to 7-7 on Tuesday?
Well, it was Anand’s preparedness in the opening lines that took Carlsen unawares. He involved Carlsen in a sharp theoretical debate and eventually had the final word.
As Anand revealed, “I’d seen the position as far as Qxb6 (Move 24) and even beyond.” This threw some light on the depth of preparations Anand had put in, in this particular variation of Queen’s Gambit Declined that Carlsen opted on this day.
It was clear that the change of response from Grunfeld Defence (seen in the first game) to Queen’s Gambit Declined against Anand’s consistent queen-pawn start, made Carlsen realise he was caught on the wrong foot.
Poor opening
“It was the kind of game where everything went wrong from the start. It sucks,” was how Carlsen chose to put it and said,
“It was obvious that he (Anand) was better prepared than me. I made a poor choice of opening today. I can’t do much worse than that.”
Though Anand mentioned the game played at Bilbao between Levon Aronian and Michael Adams, there was another game that looked similar to the one the Indian won on this day.
Curiously, the sequence of moves, until Anand’s 26th turn, almost resembled the ones played between Evgeny Tomashevsky and Alexander Riazantsev in the 2008 Russian Superfinals.
In fact, in that game, Tomashevsky emerged victorious in 36 moves.
Playing at a pretty brisk pace, Anand temporarily sacrificed a queenside pawn in order to push the queen-bishop pawn to the seventh rank by the 14th move. That also meant Carlsen could not move his queen away from the square that blocked Anand’s advanced pawn from becoming a ‘queen’.
Soon, except the dark-squared bishops, the other minor pieces were off the board.
Anand, almost blitzing his moves compared to Carlsen who consistently fell back on the clock, slowly enlarged what began as a miniscule advantage out of the opening.
He got back the pawn once his queen got into the thick of action.
Castling on the kingside allowed Anand’s other rook to take care of any possible threats from Carlsen’s queen-rook pawn on the sixth rank.
Time advantage
All this while, time slowly turned in Anand’s favour. Deep in thought in search of precise continuation, Carlsen took 32 minutes to play the 17th move and another 45 minutes to advance from Move 22 to 27.
Anand was unrelenting. By the time Carlsen played his 28th move, he was left with under six minutes for 12 more moves to complete the stipulated 40 in two hours.
An exasperated Carlsen traded his rook for a bishop in order to elude Anand’s grasp but in vain. Like Carlsen on Sunday, it was Anand’s turn to get his two rooks and the queen in one file before landing the knockout punch.
When Carlsen gave up on the 34th turn, he had only 13 seconds remaining as compared to Anand’s s had 28:54 minutes.
This was also the third time that Anand had levelled the match-score in a world title clash after trailing. Against Veselin Topalov in 2010 and Boris Gelfand in 2012, Anand bounced back from deficit to keep the crown.
But in Game 4, Anand can only expect Carlsen to come very hard at him.
