Pearl Spring: Bacrot beats Anand

The Pearl Spring tournament saw a big upset in the fourth round as Etienne Bacrot defeated World Champion Viswanathan Anand for the first time in his career. Wang Yue easily held Veselin Topalov to a draw and Magnus Carlsen almost lost to Vugar Gashimov.

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 4 report

This Saturday October 23rd was a rainy day in Nanjing, and especially for the World Champion. Viswanathan Anand was in a good mood after his fine victory over Veselin Topalov, and probably decided that he might as well try to beat the lowest rated player of the field. Against Etienne Bacrot he chose the variation in the Slav where Black gets three pawns for a piece - something slightly risky and something he hadn't played for a decade.



So far so good; even though Bacrot was well prepared this time, the game was about equal for long. However, as the time control was approaching, Bacrot's bishop slowly became a bit stronger than Black's pawns (and piece activity) and so Anand decided to liquidate to an ending with four pawns and a rook against two pawns, bishop and rook.



However, to the surprise of many experts, the Indian then also traded rooks, and this might well have been the decisive mistake of the game. By making subtle waiting moves, and keeping his g- and h-pawns on their initial squares, Bacrot won relatively easily. In the game viewer we've included a few games with the same, very interesting ending of bishop + two pawns vs four on one wing.

[Update: it turns out that Anand could have saved the ending. We've updated the annotations of the game with additions by GMs Alexander Baburin (Chess Today) and Karsten Mueller (Chessbase).]



The ending caught Veselin Topalov's eye, and the Bulgarian kept on looking at the screen after he had given a press conference together with his opponent Wang Yue. The Chinese was happy with his preparation, which had been a strong basis for a solid draw.



Topalov agreed that there wasn't much to do for White. About Bacrot-Anand he said: "It's almost study-like, very interesting. Black has to be very careful. And Bacrot is quite good at these endings; if there is a win he will find it."



The longest game of the round was between Vugar Gashimov and Magnus Carlsen, who again played the Breyer Ruy Lopez. Gashimov repeated a sideline he had played earlier this year against Svidler, and got a slightly better ending which at some point might have been winning. At least Carlsen felt it was, and so did Gashimov's second GM Iordachescu. But it was never easy and Carlsen played accurately till the end, until it was a clear draw.

Games round 4

Game viewer by ChessTempo


Pearl Spring (Nanjing) 2010 | Schedule & results


Pearl Spring (Nanjing) 2010 | Round 4 standings








Each day we receive photos from the official photographer Yu Feng. Today he also sent us a few scenes from the region:

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC