In a recent interview, Anand disclosed that he also received help from three of the brightest stars in Caisa’s constellation: world number one Magnus Carlsen, Kramnik himself and the living legend, Gary Kasparov.
Carlsen is most likely Anand’s next challenger. Kramnik lost the reunification match to the Indian in 2008, but there has been no love lost between the Russian and Toppy since their tumultuous 2006 match. Anand said Kramnik got in touch during the match. “He gave us quite a few heavy-duty ideas,” Vishy recalled. “His help was actually priceless.”
Kasparov, who dominated Anand in their 1995 match, also got in touch and said “he wanted to help a little bit.” Anand then sent Gary “some details about what we were planning to play.” He added, “We sent him a bunch of questions, and a couple of days later we went through it over Skype…. Two years ago if you had told me that one day Garry and me would be exchanging emoticons on Skype I would have laughed.”
Anand said his former rival confirmed many things. “He for instance said go ahead with the Catalan, things like that. It gave me a bit of confidence. And definitely Garry is someone who had good insight into his opponents. That was very helpful…. Garry did get in touch a couple of times during the match. He was almost in training mode. After game eight he gave me a lecture on opposite colored bishop endings, and after game nine as well. Very, very sweet of him, and I really appreciate that.”
Anand said he also spent a two-day training session with 15-year-old GM Anish Giri. “It was very similar to what I was doing with Magnus I got to test a lot of things. There were a lot of areas I had no practical experience with, like the Catalan which I was playing almost the first time, the Elista ending and so on. Anish also sat and went through that…. Yes, my human cluster was actually fairly impressive.”
But what about Topalov?
It turned out that the Bulgarian GM had access to a computer cluster that runs the latest Rybka program. This is, ChessBase reports, “a seriously powerful set of computers.” Toppy also had access to a Blue Gene/L super-computer with 8792 processors and could execute around 500 teraFLOPS — one thousand billion floating point operations per second!
In a separate interview, his controversial and outspoken manager Silvio Danailov said despite Anand’s “so called super team, we were still much superior in the openings. Only in two games they showed some decent ideas. This was game 4 with white and game 12 with black when they succeeded to equalize the position quickly. The rest of the games our team totally dominated in the openings. Anand was suffering with black in all games (except the last one) and no advantage at all with white (except game 4). And I can tell you more: I will never exchange [Topalov’s second, Bulgarian GM Ivan] Cheparinov for all of these guys together. Cheparinov is much better and much more creative than Kasparov, Carlsen, etc.”
He added, “Topalov lost, this is sport, everything can happen. At least this match was one of the more exciting, chess wise, in the last 20 years. This was not Bonn [Anand vs. Kramnik], when after game 6 the match was over. Topalov lost, but he was attacking and was creative during the whole match. Anand was only defending, nothing more. Brilliant defense, by the way! But maybe the fans expect a different way of play from the champion, a more inspiring one.”
I told you he’s outspoken.
Regarding Blue Gene, Danailov said: “What I can say is that everything is a question of money. We invested a huge amount of money on preparation, I do not want to mention the figure because someone can get a heart attack.”
Game of the week. Here’s the game that allowed Topalov to equalize the match. IM Malcolm Pein annotates.
White: V. Topalov (2805)
Black: V. Anand (2787)
Slave Defense
Game 8, Sofia 2010
1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 dxc4 5.a4 Bf5 6.Ne5 e6 7.f3 c5 8.e4 Bg6 9.Be3 cxd4 10.Qxd4 Qxd4 11.Bxd4 Nfd7 12.Nxd7 Nxd7 13.Bxc4 Rc8 Anand is again the first to vary. He clearly wants to stop Topalov from getting his improvements in first. 14.Bb5 a6 15.Bxd7+ Kxd7 16.Ke2 16.0-0-0 1/2-1/2 Gordon,S (2508)-Ledger,A (2423)/Liverpool ENG 2008. 16…f6 17.Rhd1 Ke8 Anand gets out of the way of discovered checks. It is possibly too dangerous to go Queenside although that isn’t clear. 17…Kc7 18.Ba7 Ra8?? (18…Be8!) (18…Bd6 19.b4 Bxb4 20.Nb5+!) 19.Nb5+ axb5 20.Rac1+ Bc5 21.Rxc5# is an amusing line. 18.a5 This seems to be new. Probably both players had prepared this move although Anand did start to think here. 18…Be7 Played after 15 minutes thought. 18…Bb4!? 19.Ra4 Be7= 18…Bb4!? 19.Na4 Ke7 20.Rac1 Be8!= Shipov 21.Rxc8? Bb5+ 18…Rc6 19.Na4 Bd6 20.Rac1 Rxc1 21.Rxc1 Ke7 22.Bc5 Bxc5 23.Nxc5 Rc8 24.Rc3+/= 19.Bb6 White replied immediately. 19…Rf8 Black continues to try and unravel with Rf8 Bf8 and Rf8-f7-d7 but this takes time of course 20.Rac1 f5 Trying to activate rook and bishop before lines open and White can exploit his lead in development. 21.e5 Keeping black’s light squared bishop locked in. 21…Bg5 Quite a quick reply attacking the rook and intending Bf4 22.Be3 f4? Played quickly again and a terrible move that allows the knight into d6 22…Bxe3 23.Kxe3 f4+ (23…Ke7) 24.Kd4 Ke7 25.Ne4 Bxe4 26.Kxe4 g5 with decent drawing chances. 23.Ne4 Using a discovered attack on the rook to plant his knight on the excellent square d6. It isn’t really possible to believe Anand missed this intermezzo but if he did it was a terrible oversight 23…Rxc1 24.Nd6+ Kd7 25.Bxc1 Kc6 25…Be7 26.Rd4 26.Bd2 This was certainly not the only alternative Topalov had in this position: 26.g3; 26.Rd4 was possibly even better 26…Be7 27.Rc1+ 27.Bb4 Rd8 28.Rd4 was also good 27…Kd7 Forced. White has a complete bind in this position so Anand heads for a difficult opposite bishop endgame with drawing chances 27…Kd5 28.Rc7 Bxd6 29.exd6 Kxd6 30.Rxb7 Kd5 31.Rxg7+/- 28.Bc3 28.Bb4 Rd8 29.Rc4 Bxd6 30.Rd4 was at least as good 28.Bb4 Bxd6 29.Rd1! 28…Bxd6 29.Rd1 Bf5 30.h4 30.Bb4 g5 31.Rxd6+ (31.Bxd6 Rc8) 31…Ke8 32.Rb6 Rf7 holds 30…g6?! Every pawn move is weakening and this one proves fatal later 30…Kc7 31.exd6+ Kd7 A) 32.Rd4 Rf7 33.Rxf4 Kxd6 holds easily 34.g4 Bd3+! 35.Ke3 Rxf4 36.Kxf4 g6 37.Kg5 Ke7 38.Kh6 Kf7 39.Kxh7 (39.g5 Be2 40.f4 Kg8=) 39…g5+! B) 32.Bxg7? Rg8= 31.Rxd6+ Kc8 32.Bd2 White is clearly on top and is winning a pawn but not necessarily the game. 32.Rd4 h6! Shipov 33.Rxf4 (33.Bd2 g5) 33…Bd3+ 32…Rd8 33.Bxf4 Rxd6 34.exd6 Kd7 As always bishops of opposite colors make the position drawish even though White has an extra protected passed pawn. Now Indian GM Harikrishna proposed a possible winning plan involving a king march to h6 and h4-h5 which I thought was rather unpatriotic of him :-). 35.Ke3 Bc2 36.Kd4 Ke8 Black must stop Kf6 37.Ke5 Kf7 38.Be3 Ba4 39.Kf4 Bb5 40.Bc5 Kf6 41.Bd4+ Kf7 41…e5+ 42.Bxe5+ Ke6 43.Ke4 Bf1 44.g3 Be2 and the bishop is tied to the d6 pawn. This is terribly hard to assess and in practice unless Vishy thought the line played was losing he would not sacrifice a pawn but I am not sure how White wins from here 42.Kg5 Bc6 43.Kh6 Kg8 44.h5 Be8 45.Kg5 Anand seems to be holding here so Topalov comes back. Good practical chess at the very least! 45.g4? gxh5 46.gxh5 Bd7 holds 45…Kf7 Now the draw starts to look likely. 46.Kh6 Kg8 47.Bc5 gxh5 48.Kg5 Kg7 49.Bd4+ Kf7 50.Be5 h4! 51.Kxh4 Kg6 At this point it looked more likely that Anand would hold the draw since he blundered on move 22. 52.Kg4 Bb5 53.Kf4 Kf7 54.Kg5 Topalov is just meandering now but he is about to be rewarded 54…Bc6?? Within sight of the draw Anand blunders. A truly dreadful move. He removes the possibility of protecting the h-pawn with his bishop which is an easy draw. 54…Bd3 putting the bishop on the b1-h7 diagonal and now Kf7-e8-d7 draws for example 55.f4 Ke8 56.g4 Kd7 57.f5 exf5 58.gxf5 h6+! 59.Kf6 Bc2 and Black just waits with the bishop 54…Ke8 should be the same 55.Kh6 Kg8 56.g4 1-0. 56.g4 Be8 57.g5 Bc6 58.f4 Bd7 59.Bd4 Be8 60.Bg7 zugzwang 60…Bc6 61.g6 hxg6 62.Kxg6 Be8+ 63.Kf6 Bc6 64.Bh6 wins.
Puzzler.
White — Ka4, Ba6, Nb8, Nc6, Qc1, pawns on e3 and h4
Black — Kd5, Nd6, Rf7, Bh7, Rh3, pawns on b3, c4, c7, d4, e6 and f3
White to play and mate in four.
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