Chess Go Spinny

  Adolf Anderssen As I mentioned in my article on von der Lasa , there were two players with reasonable claims on the title of "world's best player" in the early 1850s, and today's article is about the more famous of the two, Adolf Anderssen (1818-79). Whereas von der Lasa's great achievements were all in match play, Anderssen was a specialist in the then more recent discipline of tournament play; he won both the first recognised international tournament ( London 1851 , in which he beat Staunton in the semi-finals), and the first major all-play-all ( London 1862 ). In total, his tournament career ran to sixteen tournaments over 27 years, of which he won or tied for first in eleven; the only tournament in which he failed to get a top-three finish was his final event, Paris 1878 , and even there he achieved a plus score. His record in match play was much more patchy, including losses to Morphy in 1858 (shortly before Morphy's retirement from competitive play) ...

 And then it was all over. Nepomniachtchi, needing to score 3½/4 to take the match to tie-breaks, made an opening change, switching to the Giuoco Piano instead of the Ruy Lopez he had previously essayed. This led to a rather level position after 20 moves or so, after which a mistaken attempt to unbalance it walked into a fierce attack. The best he could do was bail out into a pawn-down rook ending, which Carlsen made no mistake in converting. And so Carlsen remains world champion, winning the match by a hefty 7½-3½ margin, which had looked rather unlikely after game 5. This is the highest winning margin in a World Championship match since Kasparov's 12½-7½ win against Short in 1993; it is the highest percentage score in a match since Lasker's 9½-1½ against Janowski in 1910.

 What happens when a player has lost two games in a row to horrific blunders and is now three points adrift? Well, what happened in round ten was the dullest game of the match so far. Both sides were, for obvious reasons, content with a draw: Nepomniachtchi because it had stopped the rot, Carlsen because it left him three ahead with just four games to play. The game itself reflected those desires: another outing for the Petroff, and a lot of exchanges on the e-file after Carlsen played a line that forces the queens off. Very few winning chances for either side resulted.

 Things have gone from bad to worse for Ian Nepomniachtchi. A second consecutive loss, again decided by a blunder; this one reminiscent of Fischer's notorious first game against Spassky in 1972. With the score now 6-3 in Carlsen's favour, Nepomniachtchi needs 4 points from his remaining 5 games, three of which he has black in. While it might still not yet be technically over, it would be a comeback of unprecedented proportions from here.

 This was, I think, the first truly disappointing game of the title match. All the previous ones were hard-fought draws or games decided by very fine technical points after an epic struggle; this, however, was one decided by a simple blunder half-way through. Nepomniachtchi would presumably never have played 21...b5?? had it not been for the marathon game two rounds earlier; with play on both successive days meaning he hadn't really had time to recover since then. With the score now 5-3 to Carlsen with just six games to go, it seems unlikely that the challenger can mount a comeback.

 Both players must have been shattered after the 136-move epic in game 6, and game 7 rather bore that out. Nepomniachtchi once more essayed an anti-Marshall, but the line he chose ended up fizzling out to nothing early on. While the game went on to move 41, it was effectively over as a contest by move 30, and the rest was just extending it to meet the event's Sofia rules. Both players will have had reason to be satisfied with this result; Carlsen because he managed a draw with black without much sweat, Nepomniachtchi because he will have needed to recover after his loss in the previous game. Carlsen now quite clearly has the edge, with a 4-3 lead at the halfway stage, and four whites and three blacks to come, but there's still plenty left in this match.

 The decisive game everyone had been waiting for finally arrived. And Magnus Carlsen won it in the most archetypally Magnus Carlsen style there is: grinding away in a technically drawn position for hours until his opponent made a mistake, and then seizing on it. At 136 moves, this game broke the record for game length in a World Championship match, and at 7¾ hours, it may well have also broken the record for the length of an uninterrupted play session. With this result, the dynamics of the match change: Nepomniachtchi has to win at least one game from here to stay in the match; will he adjust his style to adapt to the new circumstances?

Another week, another trip to Barnstaple Chess Club. This week, my opponent was Rick Dooley, the club's long-standing tournament organizer. I've had a fair number of hard-fought games against Rick over the years, but this week's were unfortunately not really among them; some rather dubious opening play on his part led me to some clear opening advantages that I pressed home forcefully.    

 Another day, another Anti-Marshall. This time it was Carlsen who deviated from previous games, playing 8...Rb8 instead of game 3's 8...Bb7. The resulting play was similar, though, long periods of Ruy Lopez build-up eventually leading into an ending. It was clear for most of the game that Nepomniachtchi was the one pressing for a win, but Carlsen's accurate defence meant there was very little prospect of a breakthrough. The result was the fifth consecutive draw, and once again it was a draw by repetition. We're locked at 2½-2½ heading into the second rest day, and the tension is building nicely.