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Anand lets it slip at Dortmund

Now that the Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund, Germany is over, it is time to go behind-the-scenes, analyze the what-ifs, and muse about what could have been.

The grandmasters who showed up to play in Dortmund each brought something unique to the mix.

Vishwanathan Anand came with his red-hot streak of Leon and Frankfurt in tact. Kramnik came hoping to prolong his astounding record of no-losses in standard games in a year and a half. Mickey Adams brought the excitement he always does. FIDE champ Khalifman came to show that his title really meant something. Heubner (who is never referred to without the prefix veteran) came to prove that he could still play top-level chess. And Junior-6, the chess-playing computer program, came as the very dangerous wild card.

Anand started out blazing, with a spectacular score of 4.0 in the first five rounds. He had at that point won all three games as White, and he still had two more games left with white pieces.

Anand had it all locked up, or so it seemed. However, things turned out slightly different. That, claim seasoned chess kibitzers watching from the sidelines, is precisely why the actual tournament is played out after all.

In Round six, a lot of things went wrong for Anand.

With black pieces, Anand was facing his toughest opponent in the tournament, Vladimir Kramnik. After 28 moves, Kramnik had the upper hand. But he had time trouble and Anand fought back by capitalizing on that. If Kramnik could reach the time control (complete the first forty moves), it would give him the much-needed breathing room to consolidate. So Anand started rushing the moves. When Kramnik had but seconds to complete his last three moves before time control ended, Anand made a rare and a very unfortunate blunder.

His hastily-made move was weak. More importantly, it started off a chain of forced moves. Forced moves are a heaven-send for players in time trouble, because the players can notch up several moves without burning time on their clocks. An agonizing struggle followed, and Anand resigned on the 65th move.

In chess, as in all other sports, losses are unavoidable. But the winner is the one who bounces back the fastest. Many professionals try to buffer a loss with a draw in the subsequent game. Oftentimes, such a strategy results in the evaporation of winning chances.

In his next two games, against Junior-6 and Peter Leko, Anand could only obtain draws. Meanwhile, Kramnik beat Heubner and moved ahead as the sole leader.

In the last round, in a must-win situation against Huebner, Anand came through. He managed to tie with Kramnik, scoring 6.0 points in nine rounds. But since Anand had lost to Kramnik in their face-to-face encounter, Kramnik finished first.

As always, there's a lot more to the Dortmund story than the fact that Anand let slip his grip on the first spot.

Vladimir Kramnik's long-standing unbeaten streak was going to be tested in his encounter with Mickey Adams. It is almost axiomatic that when he gets white pieces, Adams will open with e4. This meant that Kramnik had to signal his intentions right in his very first move with black pieces.

Kramnik had the choice of playing conservatively (and trying to preserve his streak by playing the drawish Petroff defense), or of choosing the much-sharper Sicilian with chances for both (and putting his record on the line). To his credit, Kramnik opted for the Sicilian. But Adams beat him.

Junior-6, the program from Israel, was the dark horse in this standard-time-control tournament studded with superstars. There was speculation that it might play at an unbelievably high level of 2900+ elo points. If that happened, the humans would only be left to fight for the second place spot. On the other hand, if the humans had perfected their anti-computer strategies, Junior-6 would become everyone's favorite punching bag. (Unfortunately, the veteran Heubner assumed that role.) Junior-6 performed extremely creditably with two wins and two losses to finish with a dead even score of 4.5 in nine rounds.

It has been often pointed out that it is very difficult for human GMs to switch gears between playing computers as opposed to facing other humans. This very valid fact aside, Junior-6 is proof enough that today's computer programs can certainly compete at the level of super-grandmasters.

Anand will be appearing next in the chess World Cup in Shenyang, China in September. Kramnik goes on to challenge Garry Kasparov for the World Championship crown.