WCh G5: another Slav, another draw

Veselin Topalov and Viswanathan Anand drew the fifth game of their World Championship match in Sofia, Bulgaria. The two repeated the varation of the Slav that appeared in game 3, and again challenger Topalov couldn't prove a clear advantage with the white pieces. 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								3
Topalov,V	2805	1	0	½	0	½								2

Videos

If you can't see the fifth video in the player above: this is a cache 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 5 video:

Click To Play

Game 5

This time there was a little ceremony again at the start of the game. It was 77-year-old Robert Mundell, invited to Sofia by Silvio Danailov, who played the first move for Topalov. Mundell is a professor of economics at Columbia University (New York) and the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1999. Mundell laid the groundwork for the introduction of the euro through his pioneering work in monetary dynamics and optimum currency areas.



After half an hour of play a press conference with Mundell started, but just when he reached his third sentence or so, suddenly all lights in the press room went off, and as it turned out, all electricity (and therefore also internet). The press conference was postponed, and soon it became clear that the playing hall had turned dark as well.

As one journalist described, the players kept looking at the position until the arbiter stopped the clock. After about 13 minutes play was resumed, with an emergency generator taking care of both the lighting on stage and the online live transmission of the game. Later it became clear that the power outage had occurred in a small part of central Sofia.

The organizers published the following statement on the official website:

To Mr. Georgios Makropoulos Supervisor of the FWCM between the World Champion V. Anand and V. Topalov

Copy to Mrs. Aruna Anand Manager of the World Chess Champion V. Anand

Copy to Mr. Silvio Danailov Manager of Veselin Topalov

Dear Sirs,

The Organizing Committee of the Match for the World Title in Chess between the World Champion V. Anand and V. Topalov would like to apologize for the inconvenience during the fifth game due to cut in the electricity power supply. It was caused by general failure in the electrical system in central Sofia, which affected also the emergency power generators.

We have taken all the needed precautions to prevent from future incidents till the end of the match.

An official statement by the Ministry of Economy and Energetics and the power supplying company CEZ will be presented to you later on.

Organizing Committee Ph.D. Stefan Sergiev

In the game Anand again played the passive but solid Slav line with which he had managed to draw in game 3. Before Topalov could show his improvement, Anand deviated first by pushing his h-pawn to h5 instead of h6. About seven moves later a nice tactical nuance allowed the World Champion to reach approximate equality, but still only White could play for a win, and obviously Topalov kept on trying, but to no avail. Right after the first time control the players repeated moves, called the arbiter and then shook hands and agreed to a draw.



Game viewer by ChessTempo

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