After testing Viswanathan Anand’s defensive skills to the hilt in Game One, Magnus Carlsen cracked it decisively in Game Two on Sunday.
The tame surrender by Anand in the much-followed World chess championship match in Sochi, Russia, was rather unexpected following his spectacularly-earned draw in the opener.
Though Anand eventually committed a ‘blunder’ and resigned before his 35th move, the oversight perhaps ended the agony of the Indian sooner than later. During the press conference, he pointed to one of his rook moves that pushed him down a slippery slope.
The victory puts Carlsen 1.5-0.5 ahead in the race to the magic score of 6.5 points in the best-of-12-games match. The third round, with Anand playing white, will be on Tuesday.
The Indian opted for the much theoretically-debated Berlin Defence in the opening lines of Ruy Lopez to, perhaps, assert that he was not afraid to get into a position that the Norwegian enjoys.
The Berlin Defence, employed twice by Carlsen with black pieces in two drawn games in Chennai last year, did not give Anand the comfort he was looking for.
It was not that Anand was outplayed in the opening phase. He came out reasonably well placed once the development of pieces was complete in the anti-Berlin plan chosen by Carlsen. However, it was the set-up Anand chose in the middle game that proved his undoing.
Before Move 20, Anand was already defending a position that Carlsen has a history of destroying. With Anand facing an early threat on this castled king, Carlsen pressed on with his queen, rook and a knight.
“(In this position) I had no easy choices,” admitted Anand later and pointed to the fact that if he had brought the queen closer to the castled king earlier or driven Carlsen's queen away (from the kingside) things could have been different.
All the minor pieces were off the board by the 22nd move and Carlsen turned his attention to exploiting Anand’s pawn-weakness on both flanks.
Though the position stood materially equal — both players having a queen, two rooks and seven pawns each — Carlsen started making massive improvement. Anand, looking to find the best defensive moves, could not help squandering more and more ground.
Soon Carlsen’s rook-pair, backed by the queen, controlled a central file and added to Anand’s woes. It became increasingly clear that Anand could not think of a way of loosening Carlsen’s fast-tightening grip.
There was a king-side pawn that was Carlsen’s for the taking but the World champion could choose to delay the capture. A pawn exchange on the queenside followed and indicated that the ensuing position had the potential to give Carlsen a very favourable continuation.
Anand was looking to exchange the queens or even one of the rooks but Carlsen just wouldn’t let him. With both players needing to make 11 moves (to reach the 40-move mark in their two hours of allotted time) on an average of less than a minute per move, Anand was under pressure to make precise calculations to plan his defence in a highly-vulnerable position.
Then the unthinkable happened. Perhaps, the pressure of the searching for the best defensive options for nearly 15 successive moves and the passing time on the clock combined to take its toll on the 44-year-old.
On the 34th move, Anand quickly moved his king-rook pawn, totally overlooking a little trick that allowed Carlsen’s queen to join rook to launch a decisive onslaught on the hapless king.
Within the next 50 seconds, Carlsen saw the winning move. He planted his queen on the same rank as his rook and threatened to checkmate Anand or gain a queen for rook. Anand saw the futility of continuing in a lost position and resigned.
“May be I missed something better earlier but the position was still bad for black,” said Carlsen, maintaining that he held the upper hand for a long time.
On this day, for the questions posed by the Norwegian, the veteran Indian could not find over-the-board answers. The task will be left to his team of ‘seconds’ during Monday’s rest day.
