Viswanathan Anand surprised players and experts with a range of innovative variations.
It will not be an exaggeration to say that computers are the most dominant players in competitive chess these days. There is too much theory floating around, and too many programmes. It is near impossible to play a game that has not been played before. In most matches, it is easy to predict the first 20 moves once the opening is made.
That is why Viswanathan Anand’s victory in the world championship match against Vladimir Kramnik, and the manner in which it was achieved, is the best thing that could have happened to the game. Against Kramnik, who so far enjoyed the reputation of the best in match-play (where two players face off over a predetermined number of games), Anand attempted novelties as early as the 10th or 12th move.
In the second game itself, Anand surprised the chess fraternity. Playing white, he opened with the queen pawn. He had used it only thrice in 58 previous meetings with Kramnik in all time formats, the last of them six years ago.
The real thing was unveiled in the three games that Anand won. Remarkably, two of them came with black pieces, which is the more difficult thing to do since white pieces move first. Winning with black gave a big boost to Anand since Kramnik has always struggled to beat Anand when he plays white.
In Game 3, Anand handled an extremely messy situation created by the opening: Queens Gambit Declined, Meran variation. Anand played the same line in Game 5 despite knowing that Kramnik’s team must have been ready for it by that time. But Anand changed the move order, which resulted in another novelty. Game 6 delivered a win with the white side of Nimzo Indian defence.
With this win, Anand has accomplished what no one else has, not even Garry Kasparov. He has won the world championship in every format. Before this win in match-play, he was the last man standing in 128-player knock-out format in 2000. And last year, he won an eight-player double round robin league, which included Kramnik. The Russian quipped that he had only “lent” the title to Anand till the re-match in match-play. In this match, Kramnik taunted Anand a lot, but Anand says it only made him concentrate better.
With this, Anand, a prodigy who became the first Asian in 1987 to win the World Junior Championship, has silenced those who said he was not very good in match-play. He could not have proved his match-play credentials against a better player. Kramnik, who dethroned Gary Kasparov, arguably the best ever, by a two-point margin in 2000, was unbeaten in match-play since then until Anand did him in.
