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Journalism of Courage
The second round games at the Candidates tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk spun on a different axis to that of the opening day, with three boards yielding results on Friday. Playing black, Viswanathan Anand consolidated on his first round win over World No. 2 Levon Aronian with a comfortable draw against Veselin Topalov, while Peter Svidler and Vladimir Kramnik joined the Indian at the top of the table with wins. Aronian too got his challenge back on track with a win against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.
Topalov had unsuccessfully challenged Anand for the world title in 2011, and was coming into the game on the back of a loss to Anand, giving the then-world champion a rare win in 2013. Topalov, though, is ranked three spots above Anand in the latest ratings, and was considered one of the outside favourites at the beginning of the tournament. The Bulgarian began with a non-conventional opening, the Reti, much like Magnus Carlsen had against Anand, in the early stages of the championship match in November last year. Anand wasn’t too troubled by the opening then (he even had something of an advantage in a few of the Retis against Carlsen), and Friday did not prove much different.
Anand played a novelty early in the opening (7… Bd6), which was perhaps a remnant of his preparation from during the match against Carlsen. The idea was to sacrifice a central pawn, but instead force a speedy exchange of queens and fracture white’s queen-side pawns. The engines approved of Anand’s plan — black was evaluated to have neutralised white’s first-move advantage as early as around the 13th move. In the middle game, Anand had the option of forcing a draw through repetition, but he chose not to go for it perhaps because Topalov had by then fallen a bit behind on the clock.
Still, with just rooks and pawns on the board, the complications Anand sought to enforce didn’t worry Topalov. The Bulgarian held on to the extra pawn, but the game had by then entered the ‘theoretically drawn’ relm. The Sofia Rules which bars players from signing quick draws are not in force this tournament. Topalov, though, has at various points in the past asked for the Sofia rules to be made mandatory in big tournaments, and unsurprisingly, played on until the board was stripped off all the pieces except for the two kings.
The draw had taken 54 moves, but that it was the first game of the round to come to an end suggests that the players weren’t exactly wading through murky waters. Though Topalov has looked fairly solid in the first set of games ahead of Saturday’s rest day, he will know bigger tests await after. He will play top seed Aronian in the next set of matches. Anand will play bottom-placed Mamedyarov.
Aronian was the beneficiary of the most straight-forward result of the round, as Mamedyarov blundered early in the Queen’s gambit declined (Rafozin Defence) setup, giving the Armenian a queen for a rook and bishop. That it was a blunder and that Mamedyarov could do precious little about the position was evident from his use of the clock. Despite the early mistake, Mamedyarov did not use more than nine minutes for any of his moves subsequently, until he resigned on move 44.
Andreikin again played a wild game, but this time he could not really pull back like in the first round draw against Kramnik. There was the rare sight of Andreikin’s two central connected pawns sitting within a square of promotion, at d2 and e2, but even that was not enough. Svidler’s rooks were perfectly positioned, going on a jaunt, picking up black pieces but returning right in time to thwart the ambitious pawns. Andreikin resigned on the 31st move.
Kramnik’s win over Sergey Karjakin was the longest game of the day. Kramnik came out the better of the Queen’s gambit declined opening despite Karjakin’s novelty. Kramnik threw in an exchange sacrifice to force the win, though both players had less than three minutes by the time Karjakin threw in the towel on move 39.
Rankings after round 2: 1-3. V Anand, P Svidler, V Kramnik (1.5 pts); 4-5. V Topalov, L Aronian (1); 6-8. D Andreikin, S Karjakin, S Mamedyarov (0.5)
Results, round 2: Kramnik bt Karjakin, Svidler bt Andreikin, Topalov drew with Anand, Aronian bt Mamedyarov
Pairings for round 3: Andreikin vs Karjakin, Svidler vs Kramnik, Topalov vs Aronian, Mamedyarov vs Anand
