London Chess Classic 2015 - Round 6 Recap

Opening: A20: English opening

Player(s): Grischuk, Anand

GM Joel Benjamin recaps Round 6. Quite an interesting round today in London. Only one decisive game - remember the leitmotif? - but three out of the five games were entertaining and worth the ticket. Carlsen, who is still winless in this event, drew an uneventful game vs. Giri. Aronian tried an unusual maneuver with the rook in the opening, but he and Nakamura played in conservative mode, and the game ended in a rook ending draw. Topalov has been struggling during the whole tournament, but today he got a nice position against Adams. The British GM, who has not lost any game so far, was though able to react by sacrificing an exchange complicating the game. Topalov still had a chance to win his first game, but could not find the right plan to do so, and had to settle for a draw, allowing Adams to force a move repetition. There is no chance for a free-Berlin-zone in the London Chess classic, so we had our Berlin today in the MVL vs. Caruana encounter. Like most Berlins, the game was in the ending phase after 10 moves, when Caruana played the unusual 10. ...b6. MVL ideated a good plan after some Knight's checks with 18. a4, creating the ground for tactic possibilities. Caruana is a great defender though, and despite being in constant danger of a decisive blow, he managed to remain clam, keeping MVL at bay. Maxime was probably concerned about his clock, and decided to go for the repetition. Anand, after striking back yesterday, today lost a drawn game against Grischuk. Alexander decided to play chess today, avoiding super-theoretical lines: 1.c4,d4 2.d3 and let's see how it goes. The game developed into a long struggle, with Grischuk low in time, but always able to create problems to the Indian genius. In the endgame Anand had a beautiful d passed pawn, rolling down dangerously toward the first rank. Such a strong outpost should have ensured at the least the draw, but Vishy played an unexpected move, placing his king in front of the soon-to-be Queen pawn. This gave Grischuk the go to let his own passed pawns roll, and Anand had to resign a few moves later. Now 4 players lead with 3.5/6, at +1: Nakamura, MVL, Giri and Grischuk. Half a point behind Carlsen, Caruana, Aronian and Adams. Anand follows with 2.5. Topalov closes the list with 1.5. Tomorrow round 7 starts at 11AM EST. Pairings: Caruana-Giri, Anand-MVL, Adams-Grischuk, Aronian-Topalov, Carlsen-Nakamura.

Teacher's library (453) A20 Grischuk Anand recap