Friday 22 October 2010

SSDD (Same stuff, different day)

Round 3 of the Pearl Spring tournament saw three decisive games, with wins by Carlsen, Anand and Bacrot. While the win by Carlsen (against Wang Yue) seems to indicate he is back in form, it was the win by Anand over Topalov that was the most fascinating. If you play through the game, you will notice some similarities to their final game from this years World Championship Match. Then as now Anand had the black pieces, and this game began with the same variation (up until move 9). Despite taking a different course after that Anand still managed to drag the White king to h4, where in this game it perished. I haven't seen the post game comments, but I'd hazard a guess that Topalov would not be happy about being hit by lightning twice in a row.

Topalov,Veselin - Anand,Viswanathan [D57]
Pearl Spring, 22.10.2010

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.Nc3 Be7 5.Bg5 h6 6.Bh4 0-0 7.e3 Ne4 8.Bxe7 Qxe7 9.cxd5 Nxc3 10.bxc3 exd5 11.Qb3 Rd8 12.c4 Be6 13.c5 b6 14.Rc1 bxc5 15.Qa3 Nd7 16.Bb5 Bg4 17.Bxd7 Rxd7 18.Qxc5 Qe4 19.Rg1 Re8 20.Qb5 Rdd8 21.Qe2 Rb8 22.h3 Bxf3 23.gxf3 Qf5 24.f4 Rb1 25.Rxb1 Qxb1+ 26.Qd1 Rb8 27.Ke2 Qf5 28.Rh1 Rb2+ 29.Kf3 h5 (D)
30.a4 Qe4+ 31.Kg3 h4+ 32.Kxh4 Rxf2 33.Qg4 Rg2 0-1

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