Anand Beats Adams, In With Title Chance

By Arvind Aaron

Top seed Viswanathan Anand latched on to a 40th move inaccuracy by Michael Adams of England to win and move to clear second place at the end of the ninth and penultimate round in the Mtel Masters Chess Tournament being played at Grand Hotel Sofia in Bulgaria on Saturday. The rather unusual victory with the black pieces offers Anand title chances.

In the most important encounter between the two overnight joint leaders, Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria scored a crushing 30-move victory against Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine to move into sole lead with 5.5 points. Topalov sacrificed a knight and drove the black king from its citadel before inflicting a defeat. Topalov had helped Ponomariov win the FIDE world title in January 2002 by being his trainer in his title match against Vassily Ivanchuk at Moscow.

Topalov has 5.5 points and Anand is closely behind with five points. Topalov leads but has to play Kramnik with the black pieces in the final round. Anand plays Polgar with white and Ponomariov plays Adams with white. The battle for the title and the one to avoid the last place will be fought with the same fervour. In case of a tie on points for the title there will be a play off and one winner. Anand's rapid score against Topalov is extremely good and it includes a match win at Sofia early last year.

Playing his second black in a row, Anand defended with the rock solid Petroff's defence. Adams' unambitious opening play did not pose problems for black. On the 40th turn, Adams allowed black a chance by placing his bishop in the corner of the board. Anand, as agile as ever, entombed it with his pawns and captured it. The Indian used extremely sound technique thereafter to win the game in 60 moves by hunting down the white king.

Having been beaten in 20 moves in the Petroff's defence by Anand in the earlier black game, Kramnik surprised everyone by repeating the game opening against Judit Polgar. After playing for the initiative with the black pieces for long, Kramnik drew in a level 44-move knight ending.

The results (round nine): Veselin Topalov (Bul) 5.5 bt Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukr) 4.5, Judit Polgar (Hun) 4.5 drew Vladimir Kramnik (Rus) 4, Michael Adams (Eng) 3.5 lost to Viswanathan Anand (Ind) 5.

The moves:

White: GM Michael Adams - Black: Viswanathan Anand, round nine, Petroff's defence, C42: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nf3 Nxe4 5.d4 d5 6.Bd3 Nc6 7.0-0 Be7 8.c4 Nb4 9.Be2 0-0 10.Nc3 Bf5 11.a3 Nxc3 12.bxc3 Nc6 13.Re1 Re8 14.cxd5 Qxd5 15.Bf4 Rac8 16.Bg3 Bd6 17.Nd2 Bxg3 18.hxg3 Na5 19.Qa4 Bd7 20.Qc2 b6 21.Bd3 h6 22.Bh7+ Kf8 23.Be4 Qd6 24.Nf3 Be6 25.Ne5 Bb3 26.Qe2 c5 27.Qg4 Rcd8 28.Bf5 cxd4 29.cxd4 Nc6 30.Nxc6 Rxe1+ 31.Rxe1 Qxc6 32.Qe2 Qd6 33.Qf3 Bc4 34.Qe3 Bb5 35.Rd1 Ba4 36.Rd2 Re8 37.Qc3 h5 38.Qc1 Qe7 39.Qc3 Qg5 40.Bh3 Kg8 41.d5 f5 42.d6 Bd7 43.Rd1 Qg6 44.Qc7 Qe6 45.Qxa7 b5 46.Qc5 g5 47.g4 hxg4 48.Bxg4 fxg4 49.Qxg5+ Kh7 50.Qh5+ Kg7 51.Qg5+ Qg6 52.Qc5 Qf6 53.Qa7 Qf5 54.Qd4+ Kg6 55.Qc3 Qe5 56.Qd3+ Kg7 57.Qc2 Rh8 58.Qc7 Qh2+ 59.Kf1 Qh1+ 60.Ke2 Re8+ 0-1.

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