Zurich R4: Caruana defeats Anand in a wild round

In one of the strongest tournaments of the year the World Champion Viswanathan Anand (India) is facing the former title-holder Vladimir Kramnik (Russia), last year’s World Championship challenger Boris Gelfand (Israel) and the rising star Fabiano Caruana (Italy). At the Savoy Hotel, Paradeplatz, Zurich, the four masters are playing a double round-robin tournament from 23 February to 1 March 2013.

Round four report

By GM Alejandro Ramirez

Anand, Vishy – Caruana, Fabiano 0-1
Fabiano continues to impress with his very deep opening preparation. The 14... Nh7 and 15... Qf6 idea was strong and allowed him to equalize without problems against the World Champion, who pressed for an advantage anyways. This might have backfired slightly, as once the center was open his rook was in an awkward position. Anand sacrificed it with Rxe5!? for interesting compensation – mainly a strong passed pawn. However he got outplayed move by move, until the compensation ran out and he was forced to resign.

Gelfand, Boris – Kramnik, Vladimir ½-½
Gelfand will be counting his lucky stars tonight! This Closed Catalan was far from dull. Kramnik's setup with Bc6-Qb7 proved to be very strong and Gelfand had problems proving any time of opening advantage. The unbalanced position resulting after the trade of the d and f pawns was murky and hard to evaluate, but it was Big Vlad that had the better understanding of the situation! The fantastic sacrifice 22... Nxf2! emphasized the poor position of White's pieces and the power of the bishops. Yet immediately after that both players started making serious mistakes! A tactical melee ensued and Black came out ahead the pair of bishops and a strong initiative, but through a series of passive moves Kramnik let go of his advantage and the game fizzled into a draw.

Current standings

Live streams of the game

Once again Garry Kasparov was a special guest at the Zurich Chess Challenge, commenting on the games and participating in the postmortem analysis. If you missed it live you can watch it all on the streaming video provided by the organisers.

More video commentary from the round is available here on the official site.

Impressions on round four by Vijay Kumar

Schedule and results

Zurich on the free day

By Vijay Kumar

It was a free day at the Zurich Chess Challenge, but Dr Christian Issler planned a memorable visit to Mount Pilatus, some 100 km from Zurich. Situated in the heart of Switzerland, Lucerne's "Dragon Mountain" – steeped in dragon legend and with spectacular views of the Alps and central plains – attracts thousands of international visitors every year. The unique Alpine panorama with 73 peaks and six lakes, circular hiking trails and easy-to-reach vantage points, make a Mount Pilatus excursion the ultimate Alpine experience.

The summit is reached from Alpnachstad, the bottom station of the Pilatus Railway – with a 48% gradient, the world's steepest cogwheel railway – from Kriens to Fräkmüntegg by aerial gondola and then up to the Pilatus summit by aerial cableway.

The City of Kriens recently opened a chess museum, where hundreds of chess pieces from various part of the world are on show, collected by the Werner and Roland Rupp brothers, in over 20 years. Here are some chess sets:

They had put up an excellent collection of anything connected with chess – the museum has more than 52,000 stamps and some 100,000 books and publications.

In the following video you see Pilatus, the museum and Dr Christian Issler playing against GM Genna Sosonko

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN 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 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

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