Spoilsport Anand outplays Kramnik, Abhijit second in Group C

WIJK AAN ZEE - World champion Viswanathan Anand continued to play spoilsport, this time beating Vladimir Kramnik, at the 72nd edition of the Corus Grandmasters chess tournament.

Anand may not have much of a chance of winning the first place. Theoretically, for a share of the first place, Anand will need to win and hope that the current leader Magnus Carlsen loses, while Kramnik and Alexei Shirov do no better than a draw.

Anand, the only unbeaten player in Group A, outplayed leader Vladimir Kramnik in the 12th and penultimate round. That gave Anand a total of seven points, but he is still one full point behind the new sole leader Magnus Carlsen, who has eight. There’s only one more round to go and Anand plays Loek Van Wely in the final round.

“I am basically spoiling other people’s tournaments,” he said with a mischievous smile after beating Kramnik Saturday. Kramnik was tied for first place with Carlsen before he suffered his defeat, just as Alexei Shirov was a front-runner until he went down against Anand two rounds earlier.

In Group B, Parimarjan Negi of India went down to Finland’s Tomi Nybck, who also bagged the Best game award in the Group. Negi lost in 41 moves from a Grnfeld. Harikrishna drew with Emil Sutovsky and now has six points, the same as Negi. They are both tied for sixth place, while Anish Giri leads at 8.5 points.

In group C, Abhijit Gupta beat fellow Indian, Sowmya Swaminathan in 32 moves of a Sicilian Rauzer. The win took Abhijit to shared second place at 7.5 points, but 1.5 points behind leader Li Chao, who cannot be caught now.

This is the second time in this event that Anand has beaten the then leader. Earlier in the tenth round, he beat Alexei Shirov, who was leading the event at that time.

Carlsen who secured his position on top of the standings by keeping Hungary’s Peter Leko to a draw with black in 12th-round action.

Anand said Kramnik, who opted for his favourite Petroff with black, “completely forgot what he had planned” after some twenty moves and then chose something solid with a white exchange sacrifice.

“It led to a position where white, with his strong pawns, had a clear advantage.” At the 33rd, Anand said.

“Kramnik looked at me with raised eyebrows. He seemed to think we’d had a threefold repetition. I had to point out that there was a pawn on f7 the first time round.”

By then it was clear to everyone else that Kramnik was in deep trouble. Anand handled the remainder so well that some experts said he played like a computer and wondered “whether this meant the world champion is super-human.”

Asked whether he felt he was unable to play all out because he wanted to keep some of his prepared opening secrets for his upcoming title match against Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, Anand said “that’s like comparing apples to oranges. In the tournament I play thirteen different people; in a match I play just one. It’s a completely different thing.”

The 500-euro award for the best game of the round in Group A went to Anand.