Grenke Chess Classic: Anand Stops Carlsen, Svidler Joins Lead
Viswanathan Anand was in his own words "close to lost for most of the game," but defended brilliantly to hold Magnus Carlsen to a draw. This gave Peter Svidler, who won for the second day in a row, the chance to catch Carlsen in first place at the Grenke Chess Classic in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Even though it was split by two tournaments (the final part of Shamkir and the start of Grenke), Carlsen lost his chance to "do a Caruana"—score seven wins in a row. After five straight victories, it was the 15th world champion, Anand, who stopped him.
Carlsen was close to winning though. Twice, in fact.
First, Anand made kind of a "mouse slip" in the opening on move 10. The game had followed the first tiebreak game of the Carlsen-Caruana match and also a recent Svidler-Tomashevsky game from the Bundesliga.
Anand said he took his "eye off the ball" for a moment when he played 10...c6.
With 11.f4! Carlsen started a pawn storm on the kingside that got him a big space advantage. Engines started to give White a +2 evaluation very soon, which seemed a bit too much but it definitely made clear that Anand was in trouble.
The Indian GM, who briefly joined the commentary afterward (Carlsen did not), could only admit that he was expecting to lose. However, the five-time world champion kept fighting like a tiger and held his own, until he made another mistake and found new troubles.
"I thought I lost the game again," Anand said about the moment when Carlsen played 53.Bf2!, an impressive mini-plan that had started with Kf2-g1 and was intended to move the bishop to the much better g3 square.
Looks familiar.... @vishy64theking @MagnusCarlsen #GRENKEchess pic.twitter.com/WS1yjM3KIh
— GRENKEChess 2019 (@GRENKEChess) April 22, 2019
Anand said he couldn't find a defense but he escaped nonetheless, because Carlsen did not see what he saw: the strength of the quiet move 56.Kg2. Black is surprisingly helpless there.
It was the 66th classical encounter between the last two world champions. The score is 12-8 for Carlsen with 46 draws.
Carlsen now finds Peter Svidler next to him in the leaderboard. The grandmaster from St. Petersburg duly commented: "It's mystifying."
He defeated Georg Meier in a French, the usual opening for the German grandmaster. The latter managed to surprise his opponent by going for a sharp line in the Classical variation instead of his "normal" Rubinstein, but Svidler managed to figure out lots of strong moves at the board.
Svidler was especially content that he managed to win an endgame with rooks and opposite-colored bishops, because it's that type of ending where he had suffered some painful losses himself.
Don't miss his last two moves—so cruel!
Almost the same variation was played in Levon Aronian (again going for 1.e4) vs Paco Vallejo. The difference was 12...a6, which also leads to a lot of theory.
Vallejo: "This line is of course deeply analyzed but to remember everything is a nightmare."
Aronian: "I like challenges! I like to torture myself with this."
The Armenian GM also admitted, in his own way, that he didn't fully succeed in preparing perfectly for this game. "This is what we professionals do: to prepare for anything else but what happens!" said Aronian.
And so, without them knowing, the players followed a Shirov game from last year for 23 moves, not too long before the game ended in a draw.
Vincent Keymer will have to deal with the fact that he played three pretty decent games at the highest level, but still has zero points behind his name on the scoreboard. If there's one thing he's learning here is that chess is tough.
On Monday he was clearly better against Fabiano Caruana, who said, "at some point my position was so dangerous."
The American grandmaster had a hard time getting a position with possibilities to play for a win. "It seems he has a very solid repertoire and in general he is quite a good player," he said.
Keymer would have been close to winning by move 32 if he had played Qf4 there (Caruana: "I didn't see a move") but instead, he lost the plot completely. His coach Peter Leko probably calmed him down already, but if not, Caruana's words could help.
"He shouldn't be upset with fights which end in losses," sair Caruana. "His game against Magnus, it's normal, it's very easy to lose to the guy even if you have a good or winning position. I don't think he should kick himself too much. But the fact that he's getting winning chances, or good positions and putting up big fights is a good sign for him. The score doesn't really reflect how tough those games were," he said.
Game number five, the draw between Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Arkadij Naiditsch, was very interesting as well in the best round of the tournament so far. The French GM is the most dangerous white player in the world in the Berlin endgame and basically outplayed his opponent at the start.
MVL's piece sac 25.Nf6+ was a great touch but the follow-up wasn't. Instead of taking on e6, winning Black's h-pawn was a more promising option. As it went, the game finished in a (pretty nice) perpetual.
2019 Grenke Chess Classic | Round 3 Standings
| # | Fed | Name | Rtg | Perf | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 | Pts | SB |
| 1 | Svidler,Peter | 2737 | 2999 | ½ | 1 | 1 | 2.5/3 | 3 | ||||||||
| 2 | Carlsen,Magnus | 2845 | 2941 | ½ | 1 | 1 | 2.5/3 | 2 | ||||||||
| 3 | Caruana,Fabiano | 2828 | 2795 | ½ | ½ | 1 | 2.0/3 | 2 | ||||||||
| 4 | Anand,Viswanathan | 2779 | 2830 | ½ | ½ | 1 | 2.0/3 | 2 | ||||||||
| 5 | Vachier-Lagrave,Maxime | 2775 | 2773 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1.5/3 | 2.5 | ||||||||
| 6 | Aronian,Levon | 2761 | 2677 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1.5/3 | 1.5 | ||||||||
| 7 | Naiditsch,Arkadij | 2710 | 2638 | 0 | ½ | ½ | 1.0/3 | 1.5 | ||||||||
| 8 | Vallejo Pons,Francisco | 2698 | 2622 | 0 | ½ | ½ | 1.0/3 | 1.25 | ||||||||
| 9 | Meier,Georg | 2621 | 2612 | 0 | ½ | ½ | 1.0/3 | 1.25 | ||||||||
| 10 | Keymer,Vincent | 2509 | 2018 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0/3 |
Pairings round four, Tuesday April 23:
Vallejo Pons vs Anand
Caruana vs Carlsen
Naiditsch vs Keymer
Meier vs Vachier-Lagrave
Aronian vs Svidler
The first five rounds (April 20-24) of the Grenke Chess Classic take place in the Schwarzwaldhalle in Karlsruhe. After a rest day, the tournament moves to the Kulturhaus LA8 museum in Baden-Baden for rounds six to nine (April 26-29).
The time control is 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves followed by 15 minutes to finish the game, with a 30-second increment from move one. Draw offers before move 40 are not allowed.
The games start at 15:00 CEST (14:00 London, 9 a.m. Eastern, 6 a.m. Pacific). You can follow the tournament here, as part of our events portal. The games will also be relayed in Live Chess.
IM Levy Rozman is covering the tournament on his Twitch channel, GothamChess.
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