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Anand's eyeopener in 'blind' tournament

In less than a week after finishing the 1999 Linares Chess Super tournament in second place, Vishwanathan Anand is back in action. This time, in a tournament that is as nonconformist as Linares is orthodox.

The Eighth Amber Rapid and Blindfold Chess Tournament in Monte Carlo has become a fixture in many top GMs' calendars. The tournament runs from March 16th to March 29th. It is really two tournaments in one, with prizes being awarded for both the blindfold and the rapid categories and yet another for the overall winner.

This year, Anand, is joined by Kramnik, Topalov and Ivanchuk -- all also coming here from the recent Linares tourney. Additionally, the strong field includes Karpov, Shirov, Lautier, Van Wely, Piket, Nicolic, Ljubojevic, and Gelfand to make it twelve Grandmasters in all.

The Amber tournament is a great one for audiences. Every day, each GM plays the same person twice. First in the rapid (blitz) game, and then in a blindfold encounter, with the colours reversed.

The "Blindfold games" are played pieces-unseen. Thanks to the miracle of fancy chess-board programs, the players only see a blank screen and make the moves by mouse-clicks on the empty squares, but the audience gets to see the moves normally. The program also checks for the legality of the moves and does the time keeping. Even with the computers, the task remains as difficult as ever, being a huge test of the grandmaster's memory and visualisation skills. The quality of these blindfold games attests to each GM's talent and dedication. When you live and breathe chess, you sure can visualize it, board-in-front or not.

Anand's performance history in Amber has been spectacular. Two years ago, he swept the field by finishing first in both categories and in the overall tournament -- the first person ever to do so. Last year, he was fourth overall, and second in the blindfold section.

After going down in round one, Anand recovered well to notch up one win and one draw against Alexi Shirov as Vassily Ivanchuk held overnight leader Anatoly Karpov in both games. But the star of the day was Jeroen Piket, who won both his rapid and blindfold games against Predrag Nikolic.

Anand showed excellent play against Shirov and could well have come up with a 2-0 result, but for some stout defence by Shirov in blindfold.

Karpov, Vladimir Kramnik and Joel Lautier, who all have three points out of four, currently lead the field. Anand has two out of four, following his poor first round, when he managed only a half point.

In a Sicilian Najdorf, Shirov with white was looking for some advantage and play for a piece, but Anand had worked it all out and was ready. The net result was a quick win for the Indian in just 24 moves. In the blindfold, Anand came close to a 2-0 victory, but Shirov managed to hang on although he was in danger both in the middle game and in the endgame. Shirov finally got to split the point after 62 moves from the Gruenfeld.

Gelfand had another poor day as he blundered away a pawn against Lautier, but his position was so strong in rapidplay, that he managed to hang on. But in blindfold he lost as he was unable to defend his monarch with all pawns in from of the king removed, and only one minute on the clock.

In the Ljubojevic-Kramnik clashes, Kramnik squeezed through in the blindfold. In rapidplay Ljubojevie managed a long draw.

Lautier is the only player with a cent per cent record in blindfold.

Overall standings: Kramnik, Lautier, Karpov 3 points each, Piket and Topalov 2.5; Ljubojevic, Anand and Nikolic 2.0; Shirov, Ivanchuk and Van Wely 1.0; Gelfand 0.5.

Earlier, Round One was one of upsets. Anand, Shirov, Ivanchuk and Topalov all lost encounters that they should have won, if one were to go solely by ELO ratings.

Anand was off to a bad start. Unbelievably, he overlooked a tactical reply in move 30 by his opponent Ljubojevic of Hungary, and consequently lost the game. Losing to someone rated 200 points below him, in a rapid match, is unusual for him. But, as he has demonstrated round-after-round in Linares, he is capable of bouncing back in style. The next few opponents would be well-advised to watch out!

This is Karpov's first regular tournament in quite a while. As if eager to demonstrate that he has not lost any of his strangling prowess, he cleanly swept Gelfand by beating him in both their encounters, to be the leader at the end of round one.

Scores at the end of Round 1: Karpov and Nikolic 2; Lautier, Ljubojevic and Kramnik 1.5/2; Anand 0.5