Impressions on Game 2, Anand-Gelfand world championship match, Moscow
The Challenger debuted with white today. Boris Gelfand had spent nearly a year in training for this match. And a lot of that time would have been spent on sharpening and honing his white arsenal.
Gelfand opened with the queen-pawn, no surprises there. Anand responded with the Semi-Slav, one of his long time favourites. Anand moved his rook pawn on the 5th move, creating a structure named after the Moldovian grandmaster Vecheslav Chebanenko. Former challenger Nigel Short in the commentary box pointed out that this move had been essayed by Anand's great predecessor Mir Sultan Khan in the 1930s long before the Moldavian ever did.
Then followed some finessing with the move order - Anand manoeuvred with his bishop to force Gelfand to put his own prelate on an awkward square. After some preliminary shuffling around Gelfand decided to invade the center with his pawns. Anand reacted equally aggressively and soon the centre of the board became the venue for a a tense standoff. The world champion slashed into the centre with a pawn, that also freed up his own bishop locked by the pawn constellation. Russian commentator Sergey Shipov poetically compared this to how the Decemberist revolution provoked the great writer Alexander Herzen.
The waves of opposing pawns advancing on to the high ground now faced each other going toe-to-toe like Soviet and American forces at Checkpoint Charlie in Cold war Berlin. It was here that Anand introduced a superior new concept. His 14th move, a knight jump, resolved all problems that had been hitherto plaguing black.
Neither side blinked and the centre disintegrated, a Mexican standoff ending in mass killings. Already the contours of the endgame began to show, a kind of position in which technical play yield results, the forte of Gelfand.
But it was too dry for even a player with the skills of the Israeli challenger. To be sure, there were many subtle nuances with Gelfand repeatedly threatening a rook invasion but Anand adroitly parried all threats. Using tactical solutions he tamped down any fires remaining the position and the game was agreed drawn in 25 moves.
Now the two gladiators will take a break, before resuming combat on Monday. In effect therefore the match is broken up into a series of 2-game mini-matches. This first set can be characterized as a preliminary stage. Both have warily sized up each other. From the next set we can expect the fur to fly.
The tension will be ratcheted in an increasing spiral. The reason is simple, as the number of games without a decisive result increases, the value of such a result also blooms. One win can well decide who wears the crown.
