Vishy Anand, world champion before Magnus Carlsen, loses in Corsica

Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin are making final preparations for their 12-game, $1.25m world title series which starts in New York on 11 November. Meanwhile the man who competed in all the championship events for much of the previous decade has just been beaten in a rapidplay in Corsica.

India’s Vishy Anand, 46, won the world crown in 2007 and defended it several times until Carlsen, 20 years his junior, defeated him easily in his home city of Chennai/Madras in 2013. Anand then surprisingly won the next candidates tournament to qualify for a return where he put up a better fight and would have had good chances if he had taken advantage of a huge Norwegian blunder in mid-match.

Nowadays Anand remains a serious contender in elite tournaments where in-depth opening preparation is a major factor but he has become more vulnerable in dogfights, even against lesser masters. He lost twice to weaker rivals and dropped 22 rating points during a lacklustre performance at Tradewise Gibraltar 2016, his first open since 1993, while he declined inclusion in the young Indian team which won bronze at the 2014 Olympiad and narrowly missed medals in 2016.

The €102,000 Corsica rapidplay started with an open from which 12 winners qualified for the knockout phase along with the four seeds Anand, France’s world No3, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, the world woman champion, Hou Yifan, and the Bulgarian GM Teimour Radjabov. Knockout results went mostly to form and in the semis Vachier-Lagrave beat the strong Ukrainian Anton Korobov (who had eliminated Hou Yifan) while Anand ground down Radjabov,

After a draw in their first game Anand lost to Vachier-Lagrave in a hot Najdorf Sicilian novelty 6 Nb3. There are only a handful of examples of this move before spring 2016, when the Polish GM Mateusz Bartel started playing it with success, and the elite quickly spotted the innovation on their databases. Soon 6 Nb3 was used by Hikaru Nakamura (twice) against Vachier-Lagrave in the Brussels leg of the Grand Tour, by Wei Yi in the Chinese League and by Alexander Grischuk in his silver-medal winning game in the final round of the Russian championship. No wonder Anand decided to give it a try.

Vachier-Lagrave countered dynamically by 10...Bh6?! and a critical moment came four moves later when 14 c4! looks better. If 14...bxc3 15 Bxc3 and White has queen’s side entry squares for his pieces while otherwise an eventual c4-c5 looms. Then 17 f4 was still level, but a move later if 18 f4? Rxb4!.

Black’s d5 bishop was a key to his counterplay which climaxed in 26...Nf3+! overrunning the white king. At the end after 29...e5! White has no defence to Qg2+ and Qf3 mate.

Vishy Anand v Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 a6 6 Nb3!? Nc6 7 Be3 g6 8 Nd5 Nxd5 9 exd5 Ne5 10 Bd4 Bh6?! 11 Be2 O-O 12 O-O b5 13 a4 b4 14 c3?! Bb7 15 cxb4 Bxd5 16 Na5 e6 17 Ra3 Rb8 18 Bc3 Qh4 19 Be1 Bf4 20 Rh3 Qg5 21 Rg3 Qf5! 22 Bxa6 Bxg3 23 fxg3 Qe4! 24 Rf2 Rxb4 25 Re2 Rd4 26 Qc1 Nf3+! 27 gxf3 Qxf3 28 Qc3 Qh1+ 29 Kf2 e5! 0-1

3466 1 Rg7+ Kb8 2 Rf8! Nf3+ (only chance) 3 Ke2! Nd4+ 4 cxd4 Qh5+ 5 Kd2 Qh6+ 6 Kd1 Qh1+ 7 Ne1 and Black soon runs out of checks while White still threatens mate at c7/b7 or c8.