Wch G4: Anand beats Topalov, takes lead

Viswanathan Anand won the fourth game of the World Championship match against Veselin Topalov quickly and impressively. In another Catalan, it was the World Champion's turn to sacrifice a knight at an early stage, and like in the first game of the match, the resulting attack proved deadly. 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.

Videos

If you can't see the fourth video in the player above: this is a chache problem of the browser. Firefox handles this well, but Internet Explorer and Safari probably not. Please remove your cache files and try again. Here's another copy of the game 4 video:

Click To Play

Game 4

What happened in the fourth game today was very, very similar to what we saw on Saturday, in the very first game. Almost right out of the opening White sacrificed a knight and got a deadly attack. That was it. And the speed with which Anand played a few not too natural moves, for instance 22.Ng4 and 29.Rc2, or even the knight sac itself (only five minutes thinking!) sort of suggests that this game may have been very deep preparation too. In any case, it's a big blow for Topalov, who started with a lead but now looks at a 1.5-2.5 score for Anand going into the second rest day. Winning the next game could be quite important for the Bulgarian, having to play with the black pieces twice after that...

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Viswanathan Anand	2787	0	1	½	1									2½
Veselin Topalov	2805	1	0	½	0									1½

Video will be added later.

Links

• Official website
• Rules & regulations (PDF)
• The Week in Chess with analysis by IM Malcolm Pein and reports by Mark Crowther
• Anish Giri annotating for Chessbase
• Europe-Echecs, also reporting from Sofia
• GM Ian Rogers blogging for the USCF
• Rogers writing for Crikey
• GM Kevin Spragget blogging
• GM Susan Polgar with live commentary
• Chessdom (also live commentary)
• Crestbook (GM Sergey Shipov, live commentary in Russian)
• GM Dejan Bojkov analysing the games
• Die Zeit's coverage