The twelfth and final “classical” game of the Anand-Gelfand match has ended in a draw. For chess fans this game was typical of the whole match — very promising initially, but disappointing in the end for the spectators. Anand, as White, played a new pawn sacrifice, which most Black players would have accepted and probably gone down to defeat. But Gelfand was not “most players.” He immediately returned the pawn and offered a pawn sac of his own, which threw Anand on the defensive. The result was a very early draw offer by Anand (on move 22!), which Gelfand accepted.<\/p>\n
As GM Sergey Shipov says in his analysis, you have to give Gelfand credit for phenomenal defensive technique — faced with a morass of uncertainty and a line which his opponent had certainly prepared to the hilt, he found a quick and effective route to equality. Bravo for him! But sad for any fans hoping for one more decisive game in this draw-filled match.<\/p>\n
My translation of Shipov’s comments should be ready in about two hours (5:00 UTC\/GMT). His instant over-the-board analysis of Anand’s gambit is quite remarkable and should be the starting point for a theoretical opening debate that will probably go on for years!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The twelfth and final “classical” game of the Anand-Gelfand match has ended in a draw. For chess fans this game was typical of the whole match — very promising initially, but disappointing in the end for the spectators. Anand, as White, played a new pawn sacrifice, which most Black players would have accepted and probably […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1564,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions\/1564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}