Corus 12: Anand wins to narrow gap

Corus Chess Tournament Wijk aan Zee 14 – 30 January 2005 Official web site – Live coverage – All ChessBase reports

Round twelve

Bruzon-Svidler was the first game to end in round twelve, just 20 moves into a Paulsen Sicilian. The Cuban GM decided to play solidly, while "the cricket-loving Peter Svidler answered with the proverbial straight bat," as the official bulletin put it.

Friends united by a common love for cricket: Peter Svidler, Nigel Short

Short-Kramnik was a Closed Sicilian, in which the British player soon had a very promising position. In fact Kramnik was very critical about his position in the postgame analysis, saying that at some stages he was satisfied to simply not be losing by force. Nigel Short told us that his opponent often needed to find only moves, "which unfortunately he inevitably did."

Grischuk-van Wely saw a sharp and seldom line of the Ragozin, which saw a typical type of pawn sac seen in many Slav and catalan lines. After Qb1 Black needed to defend precisely becuase Qb4 was trapping his king in the centre. However Van Wely manged to play the freeing move c5 before Grischuk could get properly active and the Dutch GM was comfortable at the end with his king on e7.

Polgar-Sokolov saw Judit Polgar meticulously prepare and execute a kingside attack, which the luckless Bosnian GM Ivan Sokolov failed to compenstate with queenside play. It was Judit's third win in this tournament and put her on place six on the cross table.

Anand-Adams was a main line Queen's Indian in which Adams varied from extablished theory by taking on d5 with the c6 pawn instead of the d5 pawn, a move that had been seen in a game between Kramnik and Leko from Dortmund. Certainly the position after exd5 is solid but maybe Adams was worried about an improvement. Anyhow cxd5 was almost a novelty and was met by an exchange sacrifice by Anand which looked like home preparation. Anand secured two passed queenside pawns but Adams appeared to have enough activity to hold until the queens came off. Black still had very decent drawing chances until the awful fxe6 left him with three awful pawns.

Topalov-Leko was a crowd-pleaser. At first Topalov was slightly better, then Leko got a counterattack on the kingside and found an incredibly deep plan of getting his knight from d7 to f3. In the he had distinct winning chances, e3.g. with 37...h6! with the threat of Nh5, as found by the players in the postgame analysis. Dropping half a point together with Anand's win left Peter Leko vulnerable to a last-minute upset.

Morozevic-Ponomariov: Ponomariov had seen his Najdorf massacred by Grischuk and switched to the Rauzer. Bf4 instead of the standard Be3 was novel but not particularly good and this time Pono found his queenside attack landing first. Watch for some vey nice back rank tricks in this game.

Alexander Morozevich watching out for back-rank tricks?

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