Sport - Chess

Anand settles for a draw

BONN: Discretion is the better part of valour and Viswanathan Anand needed no reminding the wisdom hidden in the idiom.

Resisting all temptations to display some bravado, the cool and calculating Indian chose to tread the path of peace in the seventh game of the World chess championship match here.

Thursday’s 37move deadlock raised the score to 5-2 in Anand’s favour and brought him within 1.5 points of winning the title in the best of 12-game match. The draw also gave some relief for Vladimir Kramnik as he denied Anand a hat-trick of wins.

Russian Grandmaster Evgeny Bareev, who played a crucial role as a ‘second’ in Kramnik’s historic victory over Garry Kasparov in the 2002 title match, was quick to remark "Indian glory" at the end of the game.

Bareev, runner up to Anand in the 2000 World Cup, is here as a journalist. Looking at the game, Bareev was clear that only Anand had winning chances in the game.

Sitting on a three-point cushion, a draw surely suited Anand. But the champion came looking for a possible win. He was willing to create an opportunity from where he could bring Kramnik under pressure.

Midway through this equal battle, Anand succeeded in getting a slight edge and looked deeper to enlarge it.

"Basically, in a match like this, it is nice to be able to press. If you have an interesting idea, it gives a start but you still have to play from there," said Anand when discussing the role of initiative taken by the players in the match so far.

Kramnik, searching for his first-ever victory with black pieces over Anand, never looked better placed on this day.

He played along solidly after the opening moves of Slav Defence, instead of repeating the Nimzo-Indian seen in the second and sixth games or the Queen’s Gambit Declined witnessed in the fourth game.

Anand, with more time on the clock than Kramnik, looked determined to find an encouraging continuation. But after 21 moves, Kramnik made a draw-offer. Anand, thought for around five minutes before completing the exchange of queens with an obvious move.

"It (the draw-offer) surprised me a bit but I just wanted to see if I could do something. Black was still required to make some accurate moves (from that stage) as we saw in the game. So, I thought I’ll give it a shot," said Anand after the game and continued.

"This was an interesting line, he changed his opening with black. In the end, it was fairly close. I decided to take the draw," said Anand.

The Russian realised that even a slight mistake could have cost him another game. So he safely sacrificed a pawn to force a series of exchanges that led to a completely drawn king-and-pawn ending, with Anand’s extra pawn making no difference to the fortunes of the players.

Kramnik took the result in his stride and said, "It was (like) my game against Topalov in Elista, in tiebreaker. It was a little bit worse for black at times. The end game was pretty drawish. At one stage, I realised I was running out of moves.

“White could play on and slowly improve his position. I found out a precise way of playing and it started working. Objectively, I saw there was no way of playing for win. After a stage it was a forced draw. It was just a normal game."

In the eighth game on Friday, Kramnik plays with white pieces. It will be interesting to see whether Anand succeeds in winning his third successive game with black.

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