باخت اناند در دو بازی پیاپی(دور5 و دور6)

باخت اناند در دو بازی پیاپی(دور5 و دور6)

Magnus Carlsen won the fifth game of the FIDE World Chess Championships in Chennai. This was the first decisive game of the match meaning Carlsen leadsdefending champion Viswanthan Anand 3-2. This was not a game for the purist, with Carlsen's opening seemingly trying to skirt around anything at all like deep opening theory and get Anand to find moves on his own. Anand chose the Triangle System a variation of the Semi-Slav that can lead to sharp play, especially after Carlsen's 4.e4 but after playing that Carlsen's 6.Nc3 transposed to extremely quiet lines and I don't think there is very much doubt that Anand was objectively at least equal on move 13. Around here Anand's play started to get tentative and that set the pattern for the rest of the game. 13.Bc7 whilst certainly not losing allowed Carlsen to swap queens off and reach a technical ending where he could push for a long time.

Anand defended quite well and again must have been quite close to equality but the point is to end the suffering at some point and not get tired having to be endlessly accurate. After the game Anand picked 34.Rd4 as being too active and the losing move but I think he was merely attending the press conference as he had to, he didn't offer up much that made much sense and this assertion is just wrong. Indeed it seemed Carlsen thought it a good move and not thinking he was better at this stage.

It's hard to say what went wrong for Anand his resistance just seemed to subside. 39...a4 could have been replaced by 39.g4 but it fixes the white a3 pawn and Anand could have followed this idea up by playing 45...Ra1 winning that pawn with equality. After that 46.Re1 may be the very last chance, certainly after 48...Kd7 Carlsen was winning.

A very hard game to annotate because the win came about more from sustained pressure than any specific operation. Carlsen said about the win "It feels good. It was good fighting game. It got messy at times. I got there in the end. I am very very happy about that." Detailed notes and comments below.

"Someone said it's about age, I don't think so. The game was a draw, but Magnus kept on as usual, playing his cold blooded little moves." - Miguel Illescas

Game 6 Saturday 15th Nov Anand-Carlsen 3pm Chennai time 9:30am GMT