65th Corus Chess Tournament 2003

Anand Defends his Lead

Facing his challenger for first place as Black in round twelve of the Corus Chess Tournament, Vishy Anand wasn't allowed any time "to worry" about the tournament situation, as Judit Polgar went straight for her opponent's throat. After a severe skirmish neither player could escape a draw by repetition. In a joined press conference, Anand and Polgar explained their exciting game (see picture).

Polgar 2700 - Anand 2753
1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Bf5 5.Ng3 Bg6 6.h4 h6 7.Nf3 Nd7 8.h5 Bh7 9.Bd3 Bxd3 10.Qxd3 Ngf6 11.Bf4 e6 12.0-0-0 Be7 13.Kb1 0-0 14.Ne4 Qa5 15.Nxf6+ Nxf6 (see diagram) 16.g4 "This was a shock for me, because I thought the point of putting my queen on a5 is to prevent g4." (Anand) 16...Nxg4 17.Rdg1 Qf5 18.Qd2 g5 "I like this move philosophically: Judit puts her queen on d2, her bishop on f4, her knight on f3 and her rook on g1, all aiming g5, and I play g5; a nice touch!" (Anand) [Polgar very amused] 19.hxg6 fxg6 20.Bxh6 "My first intention was to play 20.Qe1 , but you have 20...h5 and I get a worse version than the game." (Polgar) 20...Qxf3 21.Bxf8 Rxf8 (see diagram) 22.d5 "I had missed this nice bit at the end of the variation; the tactics spin out of control now." (Anand) 22...cxd5 "He's playing it very safe." (Polgar) 23.Qd4 Nf6 24.Rxg6+ "Although here I became optimistic." 24...Kf7 25.Rhg1 Rc8 "A safe try, if you like, is 25...Nh5 26.Qxa7 d4 (with the idea d3) 27.Qxd4 Rd8 28.Qg4 Qxg4 29.R6xg4 e5 (to put the knight on f4), but this is also safe for White, because of the two-pawn deficit." (Anand) 26.Rg7+ Kf8 27.Qh4 Ke8 (see diagram) 28.Qa4+ 28.Qh8+ Bf8 29.Rxb7 d4 "and suddenly I have no threat at all." (Polgar); 28.Rxe7+ Kxe7 29.Rg7+ Kd6 30.Qb4+ Rc5 is the only move ... which wins" (Anand) "so we just repeated." (Polgar) 28...Kf8 29.Qh4 Ke8 30.Qa4+ Kf8 "The nice thing about a sharp game like this is that you don't have time to worry about the tournament situation." (Anand) ½-½

In third place, Loek van Wely was ordered by his second Vladimir Chuchelov not to burn any ships as Black against Michal Krasenkow. The latter wasn't opposed to a peaceful end to the game and after a meager ten moves the game was drawn. The draws by the top three allowed Evgeny Bareev to move into shared third place. Playing unbeaten Vasyl Ivanchuk (see picture), last year's winner started a dangerous central attack with the enemy king still uncastled. When the going got tough, Bareev posed Ivanchuk a multiple choice question, "the king or the queen?". Ivanchuk chose to lose the queen, but had to resign a few moves later, swallowing his first defeat of the tournament.
In tomorrow's last round, Anand is playing White against Bareev, Polgar Black against Radjabov and Van Wely White against Shirov. Theoretically, four players could still tie for first place.

Number one seed Vladimir Kramnik (see picture) recovered well from yesterday's defeat against Van Wely. Paired with the other Dutchman, Jan Timman, the Russian Classical World Champion led his opponent's king, which was stuck in the center, to the abyss. FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov also shows signs of full recovery. For the third time in a row he won, this time against his 'colleague' Anatoly Karpov (see picture). With painstaking accuracy Karpov was taken apart in a troublesome endgame.
Slug fests took place in the games Shirov vs Topalov and Grischuk vs Radjabov. Somehow, Veselin Topalov managed to hold off Alexei Shirov (see picture), but Teimour Radjabov wasn't so lucky. After ninety-nine moves. he had to resign.

In Grandmaster Group B, the unthinkable happened. After cruising happily for eleven rounds, round twelve turned out to be a pitfall. His opponent Ian Rogers was not having a great tournament, but one should never underestimate the man from Down Under. He left Zhong without a chance. Clear second place was taken by Friso Nijboer, who slowly crumbled down Harmen Jonkman's Berlin Wall.

Beating Marc Erwich in the penultimate round of the Invitational Ten's, Ruud Janssen needs a draw in the last round to achieve a GM-norm. He will be playing Black against Alexander Cherniaev. As for the qualification spot (in case of tournament victory) for next year's Grandmaster Group B, Janssen still has to reckon with Eric Lobron (trailing by half a point after beating Sybolt Strating) and Xiangzhi Bu (one point behind after winning against Miso Cebalo).