Homage to Catalonia

Impressions on Game 4‚ Anand–Topalov world championship match‚ Sofia

Anand had successfully stopped Topalov from using his advantage with the White pieces. Now it was his chance. Russian grandmaster Shipov said "Anand reminds me of Theseus, who got lost in the labyrinth of the Minotaur." Referring to his comeback after the first loss Shipov said "Now he holds the thread of Ariadne in his hands: with White he exerts positional pressure in the Catalan Opening, while as Black he confidently holds the fortress in a Slav Defense."

It is a hammer & anvil strategy, with Black, Anand would play the anvil, patiently bearing the blows of his opponent while with White he would go after Topalov with a sledgehammer. It was no surprise when Anand once again opened with the queen-pawn and the Catalan opening seen in the first game appeared on the board ( See the The Real Chennai Super King ). Like last time, this too had been played by Vladimir Kramnik in his match against Topalov in Elista 2006. Like Caesar's ghost, Kramnik's influence on chess at the top seemed greater than when he was the world champion!

As before, Topalov grabbed the pawn and battle swiftly hinged around his attempts to reinforce this pawn while Anand attempted to cut it and its rescuers off. Anand deviated on the 10th move with a new idea: he moved his knight to the edge of the board. By this time Topalov had moved all his pawns on the queen-side and they formed a threatening array. Anand's new move was to attack this mass of black pawns. As Topalov continued to rush in support to his beleaguered pawns Anand struck in the centre - the textbook response to flank activity. On the 16th move, Anand's knight on the right flank suddenly took up a position on the king side, away from the developing battle on the queen-side. By move 20, this knight had moved five times, 1/4th of the total moves! It is considered inelegant to move the same piece repeatedly - chess is all about the harmonious development of the forces at your disposal - but top players know when to break the rules. Topalov's response to the 16th move was equally strong - moving his queen to a prime location where it could oversee the development of her pawns.
By now the queen-side was an angry mass of Black, with a queen, knight, bishop and four pawns forming up to repel White's expected invasion. In between this build-up, Topalov had found time to move a pawn near his king. Normally the king is secure behind a wall of pawns but this was a "luft" move, a standard tactic to leave an escape hatch for the king in case matters went south. Ironically it was this very move that was to prove the Black king's undoing.

Anand's 22nd move was similar to his 16th, the same knight rushed to the same square. It was as if this brave knight was charging in the no-man's land between the two armies, whipping up Anand's forces. Commentators had already begun noticing the ill-omens in the air - there was something ominous in these repeated knight moves, a fatal rhythm was starting to develop. Topalov's response was to move a rook towards the centre. His response might be a glimpse into a weakness hidden deeply in his psyche. Topalov must have seen the portents of the gathering storm but chose to ignore it, playing his move very quickly. It was almost as if he couldn't bring himself to believe the mortal danger he was in. Kasparov commenting on the game (via Mig Greengard's blog) said "Topalov's instincts for defense are all wrong". The very next move, the storm broke.

Anand's knight, as if tired of rallying the men decided to lead by example, launching a "martyrdom operation", as they are called nowadays, on the pawn wall surrounding Black's king. The knight perished, but it went out in a blaze of glory. It's fall allowed the White queen to race across the board and take position just a square away from the Black King. Immediately, Black's army went to action stations, desperately trying to rush back in time to give succour to their hapless monarch. The Black queen blasted open a lateral corridor to her mate's fortress but already it was clear that the attack was overwhelming. Black's entire army was stranded on the queen-side waiting for an invasion that had never come. Anand's 25th move sealed the deal, a pawn sacrifice that cleared the lines for his rooks to enter the fray.

In the 1920s after the horrors of the First World War, the French decided to build a series of immense defensive constructions on their border with Germany, called the Maginot Line. The only place that they neglected to fortify were the ancient forests of the Ardennes, confident that it was impenetrable. When the Nazis invaded France, it took the genius of a Manstein to drive his panzers through the supposedly impassable and render these fortifications utterly useless.

Anand's 25th move had ensured exactly this, an invisible avenue snaking through the chess board that would allow his rooks, presently on the first rank, to deliver destruction to the Black king in an instant. Rooks, like tanks, need open country to come into their own. Topalov's attempts to defend were brushed aside and he resigned when it was clear that there was no escape for his king.
Actually his attempts were not as much to defend but to make it the coup de grace as prosaic as possible. One of the possible variations, where Anand would have sacrificed his entire army, both rooks and his remaining knight, just to deliver checkmate with his queen and pawn was so beautiful that Anand can have the final position hung up as a painting on a wall in his Madrid home. If there is one thing that chess players hate, it is to enter the textbooks on the losing side of one of those puzzles - white to play and win in three moves.

Anand's knight sacrifice, or "combination" while brilliant is not particularly difficult to find; the genius lies in his conduct of the game till then. Swashbuckling player Rudolf Spielmann talking about world champion Alexander Alekhine said, "I can see the combinations as well as Alekhine, but I cannot get into the same positions".

In fact, as commentators have pointed out, the finish resembles Anand's own defeat in the first game, with a similar motif. Payback indeed is a female canine. According to the Spaniards, revenge is a dish best served cold but in this case Anand served it piping hot, like a Mylapore tumbler-coffee.

Jaideep Unudurti is co-writing the Hyderabad Graphic Novel (http://hgnp.wordpress.com/)