Kavalek in Huffington: Amazing chess brilliancy of Vishy Anand

Amazing Chess Brilliancy of Vishy Anand

By GM Lubomir Kavalek

"It could easily be one of my best games," said the world champion Vishy Anand after he brilliantly defeated the Armenian grandmaster Levon Aronian in the fourth round of the traditional Tata Steel Chess Tournament in the Dutch coastal town of Wijk aan Zee this week. The game would make a nice addition to Anand's award-winning collection of his well-annotated games, published by Gambit Publications.

Anand's victory reminds us that the ghosts of the glorious chess past are still alive. After the game, the Indian grandmaster said that it looked incredibly close to the classic duel between Gersz Rotlewi and Akiba Rubinstein, a marvelous tactical masterpiece played more than a century ago. Today, computers would have won the game differently than Rubinstein, depriving us of seeing one of the finest combinations in chess history. Let's have a look at both games.

Aronian, the last year's winner at Wijk aan Zee and currently rated number three in the world, talked about falling into an opening trap in the Semi-Slav defense, but it was not that simple. Anand acknowledged that he prepared the variation for the last year's world championship match against Boris Gelfand, but didn't say where precisely the preparation ended and the game began. His three seconds, Rustam Kasimzhanov, Radek Wojtazsek and Surya Shekhar Ganguly, used the idea after the match, but their games didn't not take the path chosen by Aronian. And Anand used it in a spectacular way.

Anand's love of the Semi-Slav defense goes way back. In 1991 in Brussel, the then 21-year-old Indian grandmaster made headlines by exchanging punches with the former world champion Anatoly Karpov during their quarterfinal Candidates match. The Semi-Slav was Anand's main defense. The score was tied before the last game.

I was there as Nigel Short's coach, guiding him to victory over Boris Gelfand. Before the last round I accidentally bumped into Karpov on the street. "Is there anything good against the Slav?" he asked desperately, but with a guilty smile. He knew I would remain silent.

The next day both Anand and Gelfand lost and were eliminated. But time heals and we saw them back last year in Moscow, playing for the world title. Vishy could not use his Semi-Slav analysis there, but it served him well now in Wijk aan Zee against Aronian.

The magical use of the long diagonal h1-a8 helped Anand to win the world championship matches against Vladimir Kramnik in 2008 (Game 3) and Veselin Topalov in 2010 (Game 12). He owns the diagonal, it is his highway to the chess crown. Aronian saw the light bishop come to life and it was a monster. And things got worse after Anand also included the dark bishop into his attack.

The game Rotlewi-Rubinstein was played at the Lodz club championship in 1907. Lodz was at that time a large textile Polish city that was a part of the Russian Empire. Rotlewi's career was cut short. He died in 1920 at the age of 31. Rubinstein became one of the best players in the world before World War I.

Andrew Soltis ranks Rubinstein's signature masterpiece as number ten in his book The 100 Best Games of the 20th Century, Ranked, published by McFarland. It is a model game on how to act in symmetrical positions. White's inaccurate opening play is punished by three incredible rook moves, making it one of the most famous combinations.

The parallels with Anand's game are striking: the same knight leap into the attack, a bishop pair on the same diagonals bearing down on the white king at the same corner and the decisive queen sortie to the h-file.

Original column here – Copyright Huffington Post

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