Extinct tigers

The Tiger of Madras has gone the way of the sabre-toothed tiger. Viswanathan Anand, world champion from 2007 to 2013, has now suffered his second consecutive match defeat at the hands of precocious Magnus Carlsen from Norway. On Sunday night Carlsen scored his third win, which clinched the World Championship title in his favour by the overall score of 6½-4½. Anand performed better than in their clash last year but kept failing to seize his opportunities as they arose. Symptomatic was the key moment of game six, which I published in last week’s column, where Anand missed a coup with his knight which would have shaken White’s position to its foundations. A victory there for Anand would almost certainly have reversed the overall result. In the last two games it was the same: Anand establishing fine positions only to miss the coup juste.

One of the spectators at the match was the former world champion Boris Spassky, whose insights proved pertinent. Spassky is of the opinion that games between top players usually reach a point where only the right move will do and if it is missed, everything goes wrong. Shakespeare said something similar: ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;/ Omitted, all the voyage of their life/ Is bound in shallows and in miseries.’ (Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene iii).

Anand-Carlsen: World Championship, Sochi (Game 10) 2014 (see diagram 1)

Here Anand chose the defensive 24 Rd2 when the sacrificial 24 Rfe1, as proposed by Boris Spassky, would seize the open e-file and prepare to exploit White’s massive passed pawn on d6. For example 24 … Nxa2 25 Re7 Rad8 26 Bd5 and wins. Or the immediate 24 … Rad8 25 Bg4 f5 26 Be2 followed by Bc4+.