Impressions on Game 8, Anand-Gelfand world championship match, Moscow2012
The lead is a strange country in every sport - a mysterious land, filled with inversions of geography, of gravity. The lead does strange things to you. Gelfand was a brief visitor to this land and left it as soon as he arrived. After grabbing a win in the 7th game, the normally cautious Israeli threw discretion to the winds and took on Anand in a head-on clash of brutal tactics.
Theoretically, there was nothing wrong in his approach, especially as another win would have essentially knocked out the world champion from the match. But as Yogi Berra said, "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."
Anand opened with the queen pawn and when Gelfand essayed the Grunfeld Defence, the champ opted for the 3. f3 variation, which had already appeared once before in the match. Gelfand then steered the game into stormy waters by lashing out with his pawns, taking aim at the white centre. The resultant structure promised a grand battle with Anand invading the central squares with his pawns while Gelfand strove to undermine them at the roots by hitting at the white monarch.
Already here, Anand had seen far into the future and set an extremely deep trap aimed at the black queen which was threatening to bring decisive reinforcements in the battle raging around the flanks.
Gelfand was alive to the possiblity that his queen might by surrounded by white's forces. He counted on one move which would extricate his most powerful piece from the predicament. Anand had seen one move further, a quiet move which would ensure that the black queen would not be destined to return alive from her mission behind enemy lines. Even the commentator, Leko, a former challenger himself did not see the sting in the tail.
In the 1950s Soviet theorist Alexander Kotov wrote a series of books attempting to formalize chess analysis, systemize what a grandmaster did while examining the board.
He created the famous "analysis tree", diagramming the analytical engine of a master. Each move, the 'stem', can have one or more responses. These responses form the 'branches'. In turn, each of these responses can have further, multiple counter-moves, so there is a massive blooming of branches as the position is examined every more deeply.
Gelfand was lost in this Kotovian forest. As Anand's boyhood hero, the legendary Tal once said, "You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one." Gelfand did not return. As Stalin said, "If you are afraid of wolves, don't go into the woods".
Wittgenstein once asked Kann man Schach spielen, ohne die Königin? Can you play chess without the queen? The answer, old Ludwig is that you can't. Faced with the imminent capture of his queen, Gelfand resigned without continuing the hopeless struggle.
Game 8 was a 17 mover, a "miniature", the fastest every victory in the 127 years of world championship matches. The nearest equivalent in recent times would be a 1990 K-K clash where the 'Beast of Baku' was harpooned by Karpov in 29 moves.
At the presscon, Gelfand was bemused by this bizarre denoument and probably a little embarassed as well. Every player dreads to feature as the losing side in one of those instructional books for beginners. And this is probably not the immortality that the challenger craved for.
Though the scores are level, the initiative will be on Anand's side. This is because of two factors, Firstly, fighting back and equalizing will always give a lift while losing the lead is a bit of a downer.
The second factor is that the rest-day came immediately after the loss. By and large the best way to recover from a loss is to get back to play immediately. The desire for revenge is an important motivator, but a day's rest wll mean you get more time to brood.
It has been a strange match so far, with little of that free-flowing flights of creativity, that Anand normally shows. His preparation perhaps has been a little too perfect, achieving equality easily but with little 'juice' in the position. Indeed the drag-down battle of Game 8 showed how good Anand can get in such hyperdynamic positions, positions rich in a thousand blunders and a thousand brilliancies.
What awaits us in these final stretch? A prognosis will be difficult. There were many who had predicted after all that it would be a one-sided massacre with Gelfand not winning a single game.
As far as openings are concerned, there won't be too many changes, as the teams have little time to make wholesale changes.
Gelfand's problems with Black is now apparent. His Grunfeld is looking a tad brittle against Anand's 3.f3. More to the point, the match has reached a stage where one victory will decide the outcome. One win and a lifetime of glory awaits.
In such situations it will be nerve-wracking for both to play aggressive or double-edged positions. An innate instinct for safety will kick in.
Such play comes more naturally to Gelfand than Anand so the Indian maestro will have to be wary of bottling up his natural attacking instincts. That being said he has far more experience than Gelfand in such situations. Anand's match-play was tempered in the fires of the Sofia clash against Topalov. I suspect that it will be this experience that will tip the balance to Anand's favour in the end.
