WCh G10: quiet Grünfeld, quiet draw

PeterDoggers

Updated: Aug 31, 2011, 2:50 AM | 0 | Chess Event Coverage

Viswanathan Anand and Veselin Topalov also drew their 10th game of the World Championship match in Sofia. The World Champion went back to his Grünfeld Defence and reached equality easily but then came a bit under pressure. Topalov had some chances in an ending, but let it slip away. For the first time Anand offered a draw, which was reluctantly accepted by Topalov. Video added.

For all the match details, rules and regulations we refer to our large overview article here. Here's a summary:

The match will take place April 21 - May 12 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Venue is the Central Military Club in Sofia, Bulgaria. The match will consist of 12 games, and if necessary, a 4-game rapid tiebreak, if necessary 5 2-game blitz matches and if necessary 1 sudden death game. The classical games will be played in pairs of 2, so there will be a rest day after every 2 games. No postponements are allowed. Topalov has White in games 1,3,5,8, 10 and 12.

Schedule

April 24 – 17.00 EEST (16:00 CET) - Game 1 April 25 – 15:00 EEST (14:00 CET) - Game 2 April 26 – Rest Day April 27 – 15:00 EEST (14:00 CET) - Game 3 April 28 – 15:00 EEST (14:00 CET) - Game 4 April 29 – Rest Day April 30 – 15:00 EEST (14:00 CET) - Game 5 May 1 – 15:00 EEST (14:00 CET) - Game 6 May 2 – Rest Day May 3 – 15:00 EEST (14:00 CET) - Game 7

May 4 – 15.00 EEST (12.00 UTC) - Game 8 May 5 – Rest Day May 6 – 15:00 EEST (14:00 CET) - Game 9 May 7 – 15:00 EEST (14:00 CET) - Game 10 May 8 – Rest Day May 9 – 15:00 EEST (14:00 CET) - Game 11 May 10 – Rest Day May 11 – 15:00 EEST (14:00 CET) - Game 12 May 12 – Rest Day May 13 – Tie breaks

The time control for each game is 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting after move 61. The Chief Arbiter is Panaqiotis Nikolopoulos (Greece). The Deputy Chief Arbiter is Werner Stubenvoll (Austria). The total prize fund is 3 million Euros: 2 million for the players, 400,000 for FIDE taxes and 600,000 for organizational costs. The winner will receive 1,2 million Euros while the loser receives 800.000 Euros.

Score

Anand, V	2787	0	1	½	1	½	½	½	0	½	½			5
Topalov,V	2805	1	0	½	0	½	½	½	1	½	½			5

Videos

If you can't see all videos in the player above: this is a cache problem of the browser. We've contacted blip.tv about the problem. Please remove your cache files and try again. Below is the game 10 video separately:

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Game 10

After yesterday's thriller things were much more quiet in today's 10th match game. Anand left the Slav ending to return to the Grünfeld Defence which he played in game 1. Instead of 10...Na5. he went for the rare line 10...b6 which was popular in the early eighties.

The main point of the move seems to be to change the move order in such a way that White cannot reach the most favourable positions from the theoretical lines. And indeed, Topalov failed to get an advantage out of the opening. On move 23 Black had clearly reached equality, and a draw was expected.

Topalov and Anand getting ready for another very important game

However, suddenly Anand allowed the tricky move 25.Ba6! - a nice one by Topalov - and suddenly he found himself in a slightly worse ending, where White had a passed pawn on d5 and the bishop pair.

Still, it looked like Black could easily create a blockading set-up, but after another inaccuracy, allowing g5 and Bg4-e6, the World Champion got under serious pressure. Suddenly the d5 was nicely protected and White threatened to win the h7 pawn in some lines.

Then it was Topalov's turn to make one or two inaccurate moves, which allowed Anand's active defence with 44...Nd6+ and 45...Nc4! keeping everything together. Soon the dark-squared bishops were traded and Black was almost better. As he couldn't avoid all pawns disappearing on the queenside, Anand offered a draw, for the first time in the match. In the webcam on the official site it could be seen that Topalov called for the arbiter, who walked to the board, but then the players quickly shook hands anyway.

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Approaching it's end, the media attention of the match is growing by the day

The handycam taking care of the live stream on the official website - unfortunately the organizers don't put it closer to the players, inside the curtain, to avoid the dark image

Back to the Grünfeld and a reasonably easy draw for the World Champ

During game 9 Stefan Löffler had a brief interview with Vladimir Kramnik about the match for Die Zeit. Here's one quote:

Zeit: At this World Championship Anand copied particularly your openings. With White, he has played four times the Catalan. A surprise for you?

Kramnik: It is a logical choice. Topalov hasn't had good result against Catalan so far. At least statistically, this opening is his weak point. It's like in tennis. If the opponent is weak at the net, one tries to lure him there. This strategy was actually not difficult to predict, but for Anand it worked. With the Catalan he got his two victories.

Links (we keep updating this!)

Peter Doggers

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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