Anand beats Leko 5-3
On Sunday, Viswanathan Anand won his rapid match against Peter Leko 5-3. The Indian won the second and the fifth match game while all other games ended in a draw.
Peter Leko played his 5th rapid match in a row in Miskolc, Hungary. In 2005, he drew 4-4 against Michael Adams in a match where only the last two games ended in a draw! A year later, the Hungarian beat Karpov 4.5-3.5. In 2007 Leko lost 4.5-3.5 to Kramnik and last year Carlsen proved too strong: 5-3.This year, from June 2nd to 7th, Leko faced the strongest opponent possible: Viswanathan Anand, the current World Champion and 11-times rapid World Champion. Venue was the National Theater in Miskolc and two games were played on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.Earlier we reported that Anand had taken the lead at half time, with one win and three draws. The same scenario was seen in the second half.In the fourth (and last) Gr?ºnfeld of the match, Anand won with Black in game 5, profiting from the over-ambitious 21.Qc5? and accurately calculating a manoeuver of the queen. Leko defended well and even equalized again due to the mistake 41...Nxc7? but then blundered in heavy time-trouble with 43.Rd3+.In the 6th game, a Semi-Slav, Anand played well again and even missed a win at some point (29.a5! Qxb2 30.axb6), allowing Leko to escape with a draw. In game 7, following Carlsen-Karjakin, Amber 2009, Leko came up with the new and interesting plan of 14...h5 and 15...Bh6 with which he equalized comfortably.In the last game of the match, Leko tried 1.e4 for the first time, which was answered by the Caro-Kann, one of the World Champion's favourite openings. Again, Anand proved well prepared as he deviated with 19...Nh4 from the game Leko-Cheparinov, Elista GP 2008, which was won by the Hungarian after 53 moves.Targetting f4 within a few moves, Black soon grabbed the initiative but never gained something tangible. Leko couldn't prove any advantage either and so also this game ended peacefully.As expected, Anand clearly showed his supremacy in eight rapid chess games. He got into trouble only once, in game 4, but even there it seems he held quite easily. Leko, who had no convincing answer to Anand's remarkable choice of the Gr?ºnfeld, must be hoping for a slightly weaker opponent in 2010.
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Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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