Baden Baden R10: Anand wins Grenke Chess Classic

Baden-Baden GRENKE Chess Classic

Round ten: Anand wins Grenke Chess Classic

Final rounds are sometimes dull, but there was every reason to hope for action at the GRENKE Chess Classic. No round had yet finished in three draws, and that was largely due to Arkadij Naiditsch’s seven decisive games in only nine rounds. He had the white pieces against Anand, and the players didn’t disappoint. Anand went for the Sicilian and followed the remarkable 1999 Kasparov vs. the World Internet game, where "the world" played the Sicilian novelty 10…Qe6. Anand said he’d looked at the line and that particular game just before this tournament. Naiditsch deviated from Kasparov's play on move 14.

Afterwards Anand reflected on his improved form this year, remarking that his last reasonably successful tournament before 2013 was Wijk aan Zee 2011, where he finished clear second behind Nakamura on +4. “After that basically I went over a cliff and the next five tournaments were pretty awful”. Wijk aan Zee this year also went well until the last round, with the champion commenting, “I was hoping I wouldn’t do a Wang Hao today!”

Anand added later in the press centre: “After Bilbao 2011 my big problem was getting interesting positions where I had chances. This year the new problem has been exploiting those chances – against Fridman here, Hou Yifan in Wijk aan Zee or last year against Nakamura and Adams at the London Chess Classic I’ve been gifting people half points. If it wasn’t for that my results would be much better. Still, it’s a hundred times better to have the second problem! I need to work on my technique.”

The second game of the day to finish was Adams-Meier. The players came into the final round level and with mathematical chances of winning the GRENKE Chess Classic, but they ended up playing a somewhat disjointed game. Meier’s openings have been impressive here in Baden-Baden, and although Adams noted “it’s not easy to play creatively in the final round” he tried to sidestep any preparation with 1.e4 e6 2.d3!?. Instead Meier relished the chance to sharpen play, with Adams summing things up: “I just wanted to get a kind of position where we both needed to think, but it didn’t really work as I was the only one thinking!”

Adams described today’s game as his worst of the tournament, but ultimately didn’t feel he’d played badly in Baden-Baden: “I had very few opportunities when I had the advantage. When you play good players and they play well it’s not easy to win.” Meier joked that the spectators probably thought a new player had entered the tournament for the second half, in which he said he could have scored 4.5/5. He noted he’d perhaps made three mistakes in five games in the latter stages, while he was averaging ten a game at the beginning.

That left only Fridman-Caruana, which kept the audience on tenterhooks for over seven hours. Fridman played the Exchange Slav, which doesn’t have the most combative of reputations, even if Jan Gustafsson in the commentary box noted that its “street cred” has improved since Alexander Morozevich and Vladimir Kramnik adopted the “weapon”, with the latter using it to beat Levon Aronian in one of the games of the 2012 Olympiad. On this occasion, however, the opening lived up to its reputation, with Fridman nursing a small edge deep into the middlegame. It was only in the run-up to the time control that the ice began to shift.

Caruana cut a disconsolate figure after the game, but retained his objectivity. Although his result couldn’t be called bad – he actually gained rating points – he was unhappy with his overall play and felt that his form had finally come back to haunt him in the last two games.

So World Champion Viswanathan Anand remained undefeated and took clear first place at the 2013 GRENKE Chess Classic. Final standings (after ten rounds of play):

Report by Colin McGourty, photos Georgios Souleidis, videos Macauley Peterson

Video reports of the round

Schedule and results

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.