Anand beats Wang Yue in round 6 Nanjing

At the Pearl Spring tournament Viswanathan Anand narrowed the gap with Etienne Bacrot to half a point by beating Wang Yue in round 6. Both Gashimov-Topalov and the top encounter Bacrot-Carlsen ended in draws.

General info

The third Kanion Cup Nanjing Pearl Spring Chess Tournament takes place October 21-30 in Nanjing, China. Viswanathan Anand, Magnus Carlsen, Veselin Topalov, Wang Yue, Vugar Gashimov and Etienne Bacrot play a double round-robin with one rest day halfway. More info here.

Videos

Round 6 report

After the first and only rest day today the tournament resumed with the first round of the second half. As always the sixth round was mirroring the first round, with colours reversed.



All games passed the first time control and the first to finish was Gashimov-Topalov. If there's one conclusion to draw from this game, it's that we'll probably won't see one of the Bulgarian's trademark comebacks in Nanjing. Again his play looked unconvincing, being under pressure from move six on and eventually drawing on move 43.

Gashimov was disappointed after the game. He chose the Panov Atack "to play for a win", and was surprised (won wasn't?) by 6...e6 which is known to be dubious. White got a nice position without much trouble, using h4-h5 to open up Black's kingside. White should have taken on e6 somewhere (it looks especially strong at move 25) but Gashimov didn't want to change the position too much with his opponent getting into timetrouble. Unfortunately for him, the game looked winning for White, but wasn't.



It might not be Topalov's tournament, but for local hero Wang Yue it's starting to take disastrous proportions. Today the Chinese sat behind the white pieces against Anand, but still after 14 moves already he was looking at a worse position. A slip of the finger allowed Black to finish his development with tempo and the queenless middlegame was already problematic for the Chinese. An easy win for the World Champ, who is now half a point behind Bacrot and a point behind Carlsen. Since he'll still meet both one more time, we'll repeat for the Indian: anything can happen.



Bacrot played another good game, keeping the tournament leader under pressure from the start. "I tried to push; I think I had good winning chances," the Frenchman said at the press conference. But "Magnus put up a good defence." Afterwards the players agreed that close to the time control White might have had something better; he should have avoided the exchange of the pawns on the kingside. "I think this whole plan with ...c5 and ...Nc6 was wrong," Carlsen said about his dubious opening phase.

Games round 6

Game viewer by ChessTempo


Pearl Spring (Nanjing) 2010 | Schedule & results


Pearl Spring (Nanjing) 2010 | Round 6 standings

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC