Anand escapes with a draw

By Arvind Aaron

MONTE CARLO, MARCH 24. High class technique saved world champion Viswanathan Anand from what could have been a major embarrassment against Zoltan Almasi of Hungary in the rapid game of the seventh round of the 10th Amber chess tournament here on Saturday.

Overnight sole leader Anand, 31, unusually ran into trouble with white pieces and had his defensive armour fully tested as he had to sweat before shaking hands for a 63-move draw. Anand kept the lead as his main rivals were also held to draws.

Anand moved up to nine points from 13 games and leads the overall combined standings as well as the rapid section. Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria leads the blindfold section with 4.5 points from six games. Anand has five points from seven games in the rapid section.

Four rounds and the blindfold section of the seventh round remain to be played in this $193,250 super tournament. Anand will face Almasi with black pieces in the blindfold game later and then take on Van Wely on Sunday.

Rapid games

In a queen's Indian defence game, Anand was unusually seated behind white pieces. He normally tries this as black. Almasi obtained an advantage by move 20 by parking his knight very strongly. Anand won two pieces for a rook but black had compensation in the form of two pawns. In stopping one of these pawns, Anand sacrificed his knight and defended the exchange down ending with same pawns well to draw. His fighting spirit and technique were the high point of the game where he was in real danger. It was a lucky escape.

On Friday evening, Vlastimil Hort said Anand is the player with the best technique but he will have to take more risk and play more enterprisingly to supplement his winning chances in this tournament. ``Half point lead is not enough, one upset defeat can then hurt,'' Hort concluded.

Ljubojevic overlooked a tactic on move 43 in a difficult position to lose to Van Wely in 66 moves with the white pieces.

The last set of rapid games ended in three draws with Boris Gelfand missing a winning chance against Vladimir Kramnik before taking a 63-move draw from a rook ending. In the other two games, Alexei Shirov could not use his good knight versus bad bishop middlegame against Anatoly Karpov. They drew in 46 moves from a queen ending. V. Ivanchuk excelled in chess but time trouble stopped him from materialising his pawn against V. Topalov. They drew as well.

Friday's blindfold games

Drawn games dominated the proceedings in blindfold as well but the Gelfand versus Topalov encounter was a treatise before it too ended in a draw after 60 moves in a rook ending. ``How can you deduce this session `as boring' when you had a game like this one?'' asked Silvio Danailov, the Bulgarian trainer of Topalov. It was a modern Benoni opening and all the three results looked a real possibility. Gelfand returned the extra bishop for the three advancing pawns and this result was no different from the others.

Garry Kasparov's predecessor and successor fought in an drawish 28-move encounter. Karpov and Kramnik repeated the position and signed the draw while Ivanchuk and Shirov also made the same after 29 moves. All the three games had long postmortem analysis but all of them were in Russian.

The second session games were the most productive lot of Friday's games, yielding two decisive games from three. In one of those at the centrestage, Anand strained himself a lot to better Piket with the white pieces in a Petroff's defence.

Watching this game, Topalov said, ``Piket is fighting like a lion.'' It did not matter as Anand had won a solid pawn on the queen side and was rolling it into a brand new queen. Sidestepping minor traps, Anand made it on move 51 when black lost a minor piece trying to stop white from promoting a pawn. The victory placed Anand in sole lead with 8.5 points from 12 games.

``I just killed myself with white,'' Ljubojevic said after losing in 40 moves to Almasi. It stopped him from being in the lead in the blindfold section.

Leko and Van Wely drew the second time too after 46 moves but the former who had an extra pawn had to be watchful as the latter had rooks on the seventh rank.

The results (seventh round): Rapid: P. Leko bt J. Piket, L. Ljubojevic lost to L. Van Wely, V. Anand drew with Z. Almasi, A. Karpov drew with A. Shirov, B. Gelfand drew with V. Kramnik, V. Ivanchuk drew with V. Topalov.

Sixth round:

Blindfold: A. Karpov drew with V. Kramnik, B. Gelfand drew with V. Topalov, V. Ivanchuk drew with A. Shirov, L. Ljubojevic lost to Z. Almasi, V. Anand bt J. Piket, P. Leko drew with Van Wely.

Combined standings mid-way through the seventh round: 1 V. Anand (Ind) 9/13; 2-3 V. Kramnik (Rus), V. Topalov (Bul) 8.5 each; 4 P. Leko (Hun) 8; 5-7 B. Gelfand (Isr), A. Karpov (Rus), A. Shirov (ESP) 6 each; 8-9 L. Ljubojevic (Yug), J. Piket (Ned) 5.5 each; 10-12 Z. Almasi (Hun), V. Ivanchuk (Ukr), Van Wely (Ned) 5 each.

The moves:

GM V. Anand-GM Z. Almasi, round seven, rapid, queen's Indian defence, E15: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 b6 4.g3 Ba6 5.b3 Bb4+ 6.Bd2 Be7 7.Bg2 c6 8.0-0 d5 9.Qc2 Nbd7 10.Rd1 Rc8 11.a4 c5 12.Na3 Bb7 13.Bf4 a6 14.dxc5 Bxc5 15.Qb2 Qe7 16.cxd5 Bxd5 17.Nc2 a5 18.Ne3 Bxe3 19.Bxe3 0-0 20.Bf1 Nc5 21.b4 Nb3 22.Rxd5 Nxd5 23.Qxb3 Rc3 24.Qb2 Qxb4 25.Qxb4 axb4 26.Bd2 Ra3 27.Rb1 Rxa4 28.Ne5 Rfa8 29.e4 Nc3 30.Rb3 Nxe4 31.Bxb4 Ra1 32.Re3 Nf6 33.Kg2 Rb1 34.Bd2 Nd5 35.Rd3 b5 36.Be2 b4 37.Bf3 b3 38.Bxd5 exd5 39.Rxd5 f6 40.Nc4 Rc8 41.Rd4 Ra1 42.Rd3 Rxc4 43.Rxb3 Rc7 44.h4 Kf7 45.Be3 Ra5 46.Rd3 Rb7 47.Rd8 h5 48.Rd4 Re7 49.Rc4 g5 50.hxg5 fxg5 51.g4 h4 52.Rc6 Re6 53.Rc4 Kg6 54.Rc8 Ree5 55.Rc6+ Kf7 56.Kf3 Ra3 57.Rb6 Raa5 58.Rc6 Rab5 59.Ra6 Re6 60.Ra7+ Kg6 61.Ra4 Rf6+ 62.Kg2 Re6 63.Ra8 Draw.

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