Anand loses to youngster in Uzbek simul

Chess reached mainstream media last week with headlines like 'Chess World Champion loses to 10-year-old'. We received several emails about this news, but what most of the reports failed to mention was that the game was played in a simul. After their rapid match in Tashkent last week, both Vishy Anand and Rustam Kasimdzhanov played against Uzbek juniors. Anand in fact lost two games.

For the rapid match between Anand and Kasimdzhanov we refer to our report of last week. Here's a video of that match.



A day after this match, on March 28, 2011 Anand gave a simul against the strongest juniors of Uzbekistan and the national women's team (7 girls and 13 boys aged 7-20). The simul was held over twenty boards and finished with a score of 15-5.

The Uzbek Chess Federation's website informs that Akmal Faizullayev, Talgat Gubaidulin, Maftuna Mamatkulova, Alisher Bekmuratov, Oleg Artemenko and Saidakbar Saidaliyev drew their game with Anand. Hulkar Tokhirjanova and Temur Igonin even managed to beat the World Champion.

So far all this isn't too newsworthy. Except for the fact that this Temur is quite a young lad. Some reports wrote that he's only 9 years old, but according to his FIDE data he was born in the year 2000. The Forum of Culture and Arts in Uzbekistan reports that he's 10, while the following video suggests that Temur already celebrated his 11th birthday. In any case, Igonin is a name to reckon with...



From reports at the German | Spanish Chessbase sites it becomes clear how strong this simul was for Anand. Apparently four players had an Elo of over 2300 and a few others over 2200. Tokhirjanova is a 2100-player while for the moment Igonin has below 1900, but not for long we suspect!

In his simul on March 29, 2011 Rustam Kasimdzhanov drew with 6 players and beat 16. Below you'll find the two losses of Anand.

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Links

• Official website
• Forum of Culture and Arts report
• German | Spanish Chessbase reports
• Games in PGN