World Championship: Kramnik scores first win

Update: video added. He was surprised himself about how easy it went, but he did it. Vladimir Kramnik scored his first win today, with the White pieces, and in doing so he forced another game, number 11, next Wednesday. It's 6-4 for Anand now.

Statistically speaking it shouldn't have been a surprise that Kramnik won today, but from looking at the events in the past week, few really believed in it. The Russian had simply been playing weaker than his opponent, in fact, weaker than he usually does.

OK, Anand's openings have been much better, but let's not forget that the games were decided in complicated middlegame positions where Kramnik just went wrong at several points, and Anand played almost flawlessly. But not in the last two games.

No, in both game 9 and 10 Kramnik was in full control and where he almost won on Sunday, he managed to on Monday. And it went remarkably easy; GM Jussupow called it "a very smart choice", the Nimzo with g3, and indeed the position after Kramnik's novelty 18.Re1 was very tricky. It looked almost equal, an hour later it looked... almost equal, and then... suddenly White was completely winning!

An excellent game by Kramnik and a quite typical game for him - and we have to admit that seeing him winning was quite a nice experience today. Before people start accusing us for being biased to Kramnik this time, let's be clear on this: we're not rooting for any player, but we do think it was a good day for chess. Kramnik played well and gave the chess world at least one more great fight in Bonn!





















Here's the 10th match game:



Match score:

Name

Nat.

Rtg

G01 14/10

G02 15/10

G03 17/10

G04 18/10

G05 20/10

G06 21/10

G07 23/10

G08 24/10

G09 26/10

G10 27/10

G11 29/10

G12 31/10

Anand

IND

2783

?Ǭ?

?Ǭ?

1

?Ǭ?

1

1

?Ǭ?

?Ǭ?

?Ǭ?

0

6

Kramnik

RUS

2772

?Ǭ?

?Ǭ?

0

?Ǭ?

0

0

?Ǭ?

?Ǭ?

?Ǭ?

1

4

Here's our playlist of videos. Game 10 video not showing? Try removing your temporary internet files, and / or (Ctrl-)F5.



For some background on the Diwali question Anand was asked during the game 10 press conference, check this interview.

Links:

• Official website
• Foidos
• Game commentary at TWIC, Crestbook, Chesspro and Chessdom
• Videos by Europe-Echecs
• Mig Greengard blogging
• GM Ian Rogers blogging
• Dennis Monokroussos blogging
• Games in PGN provided by TWIC

(Note that the comments below this article started during our live coverage of the game)