London Rd5: Anand beats Topalov in virtuoso endgame

The 7th London Chess Classic, England's premier tournament, takes place at its traditional venue of Kensington Olympia from Friday December 4th to Sunday December 13th. The main event, the strongest ever held in the UK, is a nine-round ten-player super tournament played at a rate of 40 moves in 2 hours, followed by the rest of the game in one hour with a 30-second increment from move 41. The overall prize fund is $300,000, with the winner getting $75,000.

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LCC R05: Vishy Anand beats Veselin Topalov

Report from London by Sagar Shah

Going in to the rest day at the seventh London Chess Classic the one win, four draws saga continues. The hero of the day was Viswanathan Anand who got the better of Veselin Topalov. Fabiano Caruana was extremely close to beating Alexander Grischuk – in fact he even missed a one move win! The remaining three games had their moments of interest, but they all ended in draws. So let’s set the ball rolling with the only decisive game of the round – Anand versus Topalov.

After his loss to Nakamura in the previous round Anand was concentration personified today

It was a 6.h3 Najdorf in which Anand put Topalov under slow stew pressure throughout the game

Out of the four decisive games in the event until now,
Topalov has been on the losing side of three of them!

Anand was well prepared in the 6.h3 Variation of the Najdorf as he deviated from the more often played move 11.Nec3, and went for 11.Qd3!? He put the Bulgarian under pressure throughout the game. The Indian had chances to finish things off sooner than what actually transpired, but it doesn’t take much away from his systematic endgame play. Have a look at this highly interesting game showcasing the features of a good knight versus a bad bishop scenario in the clearest possible manner.

Nigel was referring to the following story that was in the broadsheets all over India:

Report including video in NDTV

Firstpost reports: Anand is not in Chennai currently due to the London Chess Classic, but his wife Aruna has been instrumental is providing shelter and food for their flood-affected people neighbours. "Since it was difficult to leave my toddler and elderly father-in-law and at home and venture out to offer relief and assistance, we chose to open our doors to those affected. Following the first floods, we had close to 20 people, including two pregnant women, from the neighbouring slums staying over at our place. My maid, who lost her home and all her belongings, too came over along with her extended family and stayed with us. Food was cooked in large amounts for all those at home as well as handed over to volunteers for distribution," she was quoted as saying by The Times of India.

The matchup everyone looked forward to was definitely Aronian versus Carlsen

This young lad made the ceremonial first move on the board Aronian-Carlsen: 1.Nh3?!
Aronian promised to consider it in the future, but for today decided to play 1.c4 instead.

Aronian – Carlsen, round five

It seemed as if the game was heading towards a lot of excitement with Aronian going for creative chess with Ng5 followed by Qf3 to h3. However, instead of continuing aggressively with 15.f4!? Levon chose 15.Rfe1 and after 0-0 he had to retreat the knight to f3. With threats of Bxh6 looming over his king Carlsen had to go for 16…Bf4. After 17.Bxf4 Qxf4 18.Ne5 Levon thought that his knight would dominate on e5 but it was not the case and the game petered out to equality after a few moves.

Ahh, it’s a rest day tomorrow! Is Magnus looking forward to a drawless day?

On the rest day Magnus Carlsen is going to appear on CNN where you can ask him
a question. All you need to do is to go to Twitter and tweet it using #AskMagnus

Fabiano Caruana against Alexander Grischuk turned out to be the most dramatic game of the day

In an Anti-Berlin Fabiano kept pressing from the white side. At first it didn’t seem much. But as Grischuk kept making inaccuracies, Caruana’s position kept getting better. It even reached a stage where the American could have won the game in just one move. He missed his chance and the result was a draw. The funny thing is that both the players not only missed the winning move during the game, but they also didn’t speak about it in the post mortem. Can you do better than these super grandmasters?

Caruana- Grischuk, round five

Black’s last move was Ke8-f8. Find White’s winning move.

For a person who believes in playing good games more than
the result, it was a very unsatisfactory day for Alexander Grischuk

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Anish Giri played a relatively unexciting game,
but one that was important from a theoretical standpoint

The level of Giri’s opening preparation is so high it is extremely difficult to beat him in a theoretical discussion. But if you tend to go for lesser known or dubious lines his understanding of the game is also excellent and you cannot trick him easily. So how do you beat him? Not at all an easy question to answer! This explains why many of his games are highly objective and end in draws.

“So that was all preparation?” Anish and MVL being interviewed by Tony Rich for the Grand Chess Tour

Coach Vladimir Tukmakov, Anish: 36 hours of preparation – that’s how we beat Magnus on Thursday!

Nakamura played on for 56 moves against Adams, but the game finally ended in a draw

Just like yesterday Nakamura won a pawn and slowly and steadily tried to consolidate his edge. But the pawns were doubled and Adams had little difficulty in neutralizing the pressure.

Nakamura’s pawn grabbing led Nigel Short to write another interesting tweet:

Remember Nakamura’s game against Anand from round four where he snatched the d5 pawn and then won the game?

Game of the Day Round four

ChessBase are offering free copies of the newly-released Fritz 15 and ChessBase Magazine 169, to the online audience of the 7th London Chess Classic. All viewers can vote online for the best game of each round of the Classic, and one randomly-drawn person will win a prize each day. Winners so far: Round 1: Lee Phillips [Anand v Carlsen] Round 2: John Bottomley [Carlsen v Carauna] Round 3: Robert Bell [Topalov v Giri] Round 4: Andrew Offord [Nakamura v Anand]

Standings after five rounds

"GM Daniel King, do you think we will see a decisive game in this round?"

The ultra-creative GM Jon Speelman gives a 20-board simul to raise funds for Chess in Schools

British Knockout Championships

Another game between David Howell and Nick Pert ended in a draw. After five games the score stands 3:2 in the favour of Howell. Nick showed his aggressive intentions in the fifth game by playing the 5.h4!? Variation in the Grunfeld. But David was up to task and exchanged loads of pieces, when Nick had nothing better than to accept the draw.

Nick Pert is now in a must-win situation as he is a full point down with
only one game to go. It is not going to be easy, as he has the black pieces.

FIDE Open

As many as ten players are in the lead with 5.0/6 in the FIDE Open. With three rounds to go it promises to be an exciting finish.

Erik Blomqvist joined the leaders with a win over Rinat Jumabayev

John Bartholomew beat the talented Francesco Rambaldi, and is now on 5.0/6

Women power continues at the FIDE Open as Tania Sachdev drew IM Swayams Mishra (2477), Sopiko Guramishvili beat Gudmundur Kjartansson (2477) and Sophie Millet got the better of Mads Andersen (2474).

Rankings after Round 6

Full results and standins of all 141 players may be found here

Photos by Amruta Mokal of ChessBase India

Schedule of the London Chess Classic 2015

Draw rate at the Chess Classic

84% – that’s the draw rate in this event. While it is alarming, we should take into consideration that, barring a few games, players are trying their best to fight until the very end. However the question on everyone’s mind is surely what has happened to Magnus Carlsen? Why is he not able to win with the same ease as he used to do before? Daniel King believes that the top players have figured out the type of positions or openings that Magnus likes to play and they refrain from going in there. On the other hand Jan Gustaffson believes that the World Champion is no longer as accurate as he used to be. Whatever it is Carlsen will not be happy seeing that at 2830 he is 52 Elo points away from his peak rating.

Live commentary on Playchess

Links Official tournament site Download all LCC games + KO games + Open games The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.