Anand wins rapid match with Kasimdzhanov 3.5-0.5
In a friendly, 4-game rapid match held on Sunday, March 27 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan Vishy Anand beat Rustam Kasimdzhanov 3.5-0.5. The first game ended in a draw and then the World Champion won the three remaining games.The match between the reigning World Champion Viswanathan Anand and his second and former FIDE World Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov was held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. It was organized by the Chess Federation of Uzbekistan and the "Forum" Foundation, and held directly after the traditional Georgi Agzamov memorial. The match consisted of four games with the time control of 25 minutes plus 10 seconds increment.Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Uzbekistan's number one player, won the knockout FIDE World Championship in 2004 and held the title until 2005. Later he joined Anand's team to help the World Champion defend his crown, won in Mexico in 2007, in matches against Kramnik in Bonn, 2008, and against Topalov in Sofia, 2010.Although Anand has been known for decades for his speedy chess, Kasimdzhanov is not a bad rapid player himself. His 2004 title was partly based on excellent play in rapid tiebreaks while most recently, Kasimdzhanov won the Rapid Championship of the 16th Asian Games, held in November in Guangzhou, China.| Name | Ti | NAT | Rtng | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Total | Perf |
| Anand, Viswanathan | g | IND | 2817 | ½ | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3½ | 3023 |
| Kasimdzhanov, Rustam | g | UZB | 2687 | ½ | 0 | 0 | 0 | ½ | 2495 |
The first game was drawn in a Petroff where Kasimdzhanov might have had a slight advantage in the final position. Then, the Uzbek grandmaster played an excellent game and reached a winning ending in the second game. However, instead of winning the game with a few accurate moves, Kasim lost an important pawn on e5 and then also the game.In the third game Anand won quickly in another Petroff and this might well have been a known line sitting somewhere in the World Champ's laptop. In the last game Anand got a tiny edge right out of the opening but Kasimdzhanov should have been able to draw it somewhere. Some back rank tactics combined with a knight on the rim became fatal.Below you'll find all four games with some light annotations. Game viewer by ChessTempo
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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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