A visitor to Chennai would have to be blind and deaf to be unaware that the city's favourite son, world chess champion, Viswanathan Anand, is defending his title against the young Norwegian challenger, Magnus Carlsen. Exuberant cut-outs on the scale generally reserved for Rajinikanth and J Jayalalithaa direct you to the venue of the world championship match.
Inside the Hyatt Regency, the scene is one of barely controlled chaos. There are, literally, hundreds of policemen and women deployed and serpentine queues of spectators are being processed into the playing hall.
The lobby is dominated by a chess board with pieces the size of Labrador retrievers. The tea stall, which serves fine Darjeeling first and second flushes, has been invaded by a bunch of children trying to solve a set of chess problems.
Up in the media centre, the webmaster is sweating as he desperately tries to arrange more bandwidth and more mirror sites. There are 45 minutes to go for the first move and the official website already has 300,000 visitors logged on. Almost miraculously, the chaos sorts itself out and the audience settles down. Bang on time, the players are escorted from backstage; they shake hands and sit.
Carlsen has white in game one. The advantage of the first move translates into a 57:43 score at the highest level. Since the World No. 1 is known to play almost every sort of system, there is much speculation about what he will open with. Carlsen decides on the Reti System, a non-committal king knight's move that is often considered a high-class waiting move. Anand responds almost instantly by pushing his queen's pawn forward two squares.
By move nine or maybe earlier, they are out of the book. Both are starting to take time for their decisions, which is unusual this early in a top-level game. Anand has looked to get a Grunfeld opening style of formation while Carlsen has double-fianchettoed. On move nine, Anand provokes a tactical crisis by opening the centre and jumping into white's half with a knight. On move 13, Carlsen appears visibly unhappy and settles down for a long thought. Eventually, he plays a queen move that is, essentially, a tacit draw offer.
Anand thinks for a bit and then goes into a sequence of repeats, hitting white's queen with his knight. The handshake comes on move 16 when the position repeats itself thrice.
At the press conference, Carlsen admits he wasn't expecting a tactical sequence to arise so early and also that he had missed a very strong possibility for black. So, he hit the emergency brake as he put it. Anand professes to be satisfied, saying while the final position is probably marginally superior for him, he couldn't see a way to increase the pressure. It's rather a damp squib of a game but both players will have gleaned some information about their opponent's opening preparation. It's definitely a good result for Anand since he has drawn painlessly with black without expending much energy.
WHITE TO PLAY AFTER BLACK'S 12TH MOVE
- Carlsen intended to play 13. Qe1? but he realised that black was much better after 13.-Nb4! So he bailed out with 13. Qb3 allowing the repetition that followed
Carlsen, Magnus (2,870) vs Anand, Viswanathan
World Championship Match, Game 1, Chennai 2013
- Nf3 d5 2.g3 g6 3.Bg2 Bg7 4.d4 c6 5.0-0 Nf6 6.b3 0-0 7.Bb2 Bf5 8.c4 Nbd7 9.Nc3 dxc4 10.bxc4 Nb6 11.c5 Nc4 12.Bc1 Nd5 13.Qb3 Na5 14.Qa3 Nc4 15.Qb3 Na5 16.Qa3 Nc4 ½-½
