NEWS
SCHEDULES
COLUMNS
PREVIOUS TOURS
OTHER SPORTS
STATISTICS
INTERVIEWS
SLIDE SHOW
ARCHIVES

Anand awesome

Ram Prasad

In Frankfurt, Vishwanathan Anand had a clear message to send. At least, it certainly seemed that way.

A simple message at that - you dare not count me out. Earlier in the year, when negotiations between Anand's and Kasparov's camps failed, Vladimir Kramnik replaced Anand as the challenger to Garry Kasparov for an upcoming World Championship match.

Anand won this year's Giants category of the Frankfurt Classic Chess tournament handily, leaving the others trailing far behind. For the first time this year, World champ Garry Kasparov did not win a tournament he played in.

The Giants section was widely accepted to be the unofficial rapid-games World championships, for a very good reason. The six players in this tournament are the world's top six in ratings. The tournament was a double round-robin - - everyone plays everyone else twice, with colours reversed. The tournament ran from June 22 to the 25th, which meant ten grueling games in four days for each player.

Anand was the only player to emerge undefeated. Kasparov and Kramnik suffered a loss each. Anand drew his games with these two GMs, but managed to completely shut out Alexi Shirov and Morezovich, winning all four games.

It was on Day two that Anand started pulling away from the crowd, winning two of his three games and drawing one. Even in the 25 minutes of thinking time that is allotted to each player, he managed to exploit and punish every weak move that came his way.

On Day three, Kasparov lost to Peter Leko, and Anand increased his lead. Even before the final round was played, Anand had won the tournament. He finished with five wins and five draws - - an amazing performance in a category 21 tournament.

In this excellently organized tournament, there were a couple of sideshows worth taking note of.

Fritz, an extremely strong chess-playing program was mounted on a parallel computer and let loose on five of these top supergrandmasters. Kasparov did not play against Fritz.

The computer performed more than creditably, and the humans-versus-computer tally was finally tied 5-5.

Another interesting experiment was a two-game exhibition match of FischerRandom games between Fritz and Yussupow, a strong Grandmaster. Named after Bobby Fischer, who was a big proponent, FischerRandom is a variation of chess wherein the pieces in the first and the eighth rows are shuffled and then placed. The idea is to eliminate the advantage of an opening preparation at home and to make the players think strategically and tactically over the board, right from the beginning.

Computers excel in the tactical area, and Fritz managed to beat Yussupow in both games.

Vishwanathan Anand's performance here was reminiscent of his 1998 tournament play, which won him the chess Oscar for that year. With a performance like the one at Frankfurt, Anand is sure to rekindle the sentiment that if there is a real world championship he surely belongs in it.

Final standings: 1. Vishwanathan Anand 7.5; 2. Gary Kasparov 6.0; 3. Vladimir Kramnik 5.0; 4. Alexei Shirov 4.5; 5. Peter Leko 3.5; 6. Alexander Morozevich 3.5.