Anand Scores 1.5/2 in Bundesliga Weekend
With five rounds to go the Schachbundesliga, the German Team Championship, has basically been decided. Every year the scenario repeats itself: Baden-Baden, far too strong for any opponent, simply wins all or almost all of its matches, and so the question is who will finish second, and which teams will relegate. This weekend one of the stories was the participation of Vishy Anand, who scored 1.5 out of 2.
This season Baden-Baden doesn't really have any competition at all. After 10 rounds they have collected all 20 possible match points; this weekend they beat Solingen 7-1 on Saturday and Trier 6-2 on Sunday. They are sitting on 63 out of a possible 80 board points. “It's just not fair”, some other teams might be thinking. Or: “no fun anymore”.
Every season Viswanathan Anand plays a few games for Baden-Baden and this weekend the ex-World Champion travelled with his team mates to Solingen. In his last two games before the Candidates’ Tournament next month, Anand scored 1.5 out of 2. On board one he started with the following win against Austria's number one grandmaster Markus Ragger, who played an excellent game and was really close to a draw:
On Sunday Anand faced Polish grandmaster Piotr Bobras, who played solidly with the white pieces and so this game ended in a draw quickly.
Part of Saturday's 7-1 sweep against Solingen was the following game; Naiditsch found a remarkable rook swing:
Baden-Baden's sovereignty is often demonstrated at the lower boards. For example, you can get games like this one on board 6 (this was part of the 6-2 win against Trier on Sunday):
It must be noted that in this match on boards 7 and 8 Alexander Dany (2110) and Lev Yankelevich (2197) actually managed to draw with GMs Peter Heine Nielsen and Philipp Schlosser!
A remarkable game was played on board one of the match between Hamburg and Emsdetten on Saturday. Despite holding higher ratings on seven of the eight boards, Emsdetten went down 4.5-3.5 and on board one two Dutch friends met: Anish Giri and Robin van Kampen. The latter has worked as a second for Giri several times, but in this game he almost beat his “boss”. In the opening it seemed that both players tried to surprise one another.
Schachbundesliga 2013-14 | Round 10 Standings
| # | Club | R | + | = | - | MP | BP |
| 1 | OSG Baden-Baden | 10 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 63 |
| 2 | SV 1930 Hockenheim | 10 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 16 | 49.5 |
| 3 | Werder Bremen | 10 | 8 | 0 | 2 | 16 | 49 |
| 4 | SC Eppingen | 10 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 16 | 49 |
| 5 | SV Mülheim Nord | 10 | 7 | 1 | 2 | 15 | 44 |
| 6 | SG Solingen | 10 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 13 | 40.5 |
| 7 | Hamburger SK | 10 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 12 | 45 |
| 8 | SK Turm Emsdetten | 10 | 5 | 0 | 5 | 10 | 43.5 |
| 9 | SG Trier | 10 | 5 | 0 | 5 | 10 | 40 |
| 10 | SV Wattenscheid 1930 | 10 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 9 | 40.5 |
| 11 | SF Katernberg | 10 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 9 | 37 |
| 12 | SF Berlin 1903 | 10 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 4 | 32 |
| 13 | SV Griesheim | 10 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 3 | 30.5 |
| 14 | FC Bayern München | 10 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 3 | 28 |
| 15 | SK König Tegel | 10 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 3 | 26 |
| 16 | SC Viernheim | 10 | 0 | 1 | 9 | 1 | 22.5 |
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Peter Doggers is Chess.com’s Senior Global Correspondent. Between 2007 and 2013, his website ChessVibes was a major source for chess news and videos, acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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