Friday, December 7, 2012

Jones v Anand

If you think grandmaster chess is boring, with lots of positional strategic maneuvering, you owe it to yourself to play through the game between World Champion Viswanathan Anand and England's Gawain Jones in round 5 of the London Chess Classic.

You can find the game here: Round 5 Games.

The Hindu explains a bit about what's going on: Anand tames Gawain Jones in London Chess

Surprisingly, Jones decided to give Anand a taste of his own medicine. The Samisch system, the Grunfeld defence has been deeply analysed by the world champion for the World Championship match against Gelfand earlier this year and Jones chose the same as white.

Anand went for a complicated variation and Jones was at sea right from the early stages of middle game. The Indian ace had no troubles eating the material that came his way and by move 20 everything was in control. Jones resigned after 29 moves.

I'll say it was a complicated variation! On move 12, Anand's knight moves quietly to f6, seemingly just to protect his king from the pawn advance of Jones. But three moves later the knight advances, apparently all alone, a lone soldier against the massive White forces.

Then two moves later out comes Anand's queen, and it becomes clear that all of Black's pieces are in perfect position, and in just a few more moves White is reduced to nothing.

Meanwhile, as The Hindu observes, Carlsen continues his phenomenal pace in this tournament:

The victory took Carlsen to an astonishing thirteen points from four games in the soccer-like scoring system in place here. Kramnik remains on the toes of the leader with eleven points in his kitty and the rest of the field is now far behind.

But don't count Nakamura out! He won again, too!

It's brilliant entertaining chess. Don't miss it!

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