The final day saw the coronation of Viswanathan Anand as the winner of the Candidates tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk and a surprise second placed finisher in Sergey Karjakin who came right from the basement to almost topple him but still finish in a creditable second place. Anand goes on to play Magnus Carlsen for the title in what is scheduled to be a match in November. For me Anand showed great ring craft throughout, his career has been filled with such pressurised tournaments and he used that experience fully to avoid the melt downs that happened to almost all his rivals. He was only in trouble against Karjakin in round 13 which was a game that started with him being the one with it all to lose, later when defending the pressure also settled on Karjakin who suddenly had chances to win the event himself. Karjakin eventually allowed a forced draw when he thought it was a winning try. If Anand maintains this return to form he should be in better shape than in India to challenge Carlsen. Whether that will be enough is another question.

Anand admitted that he wasn't really in the mood to play having achieved victory but that he didn't want to finish with the bitter taste of defeat in the final round. His opponent Peter Svidler also seemed happy to draw the line under an event which hadn't gone his way. The played a Ruy Lopez Marshall where both players seemed to know it should finish in a draw. "basically the most prevalent feeling right now is a feeling of a huge wasted opportunity because I think I played, at least in the first half, very interesting chess and I had chances in almost every game and I think a lot of what went wrong in this tournament were what you would maybe call unforced errors"... I kept on making strange mistakes in situations where I shouldn't have and because of that a tournament that could have been very interesting from my point of view finished a minor disaster." was Svidler's summation of his tournament.

Vladimir Kramnik finished the event with a short accurate draw against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Most of the interest was in his confirmation of the story that it was he who finally persuaded Anand to play "We really spoke about it in London and Vishy was unsure by that time. I advised him to participate because I really thought he had a chance and I just told him so.... Also I think he has all chances to win the match against Carlsen. I had similar crises, so I know what was happening inside him."

Veselin Topalov finished the event with a draw against Dmitry Andreikin. Topalov said "It could have been worse but in general I think except Anand and Dmitry I don't think anyone can be very happy with his play. I mean all the others are more or less losers [before Karjakin's win] none of us got even close to threaten Anand in fact that's the whole tournament you know."

The final game of the day saw a clearly dispirited Levon Aronian go down to another loss and finish near the tail-end of the field. He had a good position out of his unusual opening but his heart really wasn't in it and he "missed everything" in time trouble and ended up with a miserable position and was ground down after many hours. His opponent Sergey Karjakin was very pleased with his +3 in the second half and he could have won the event had he converted the day before (although no doubt today's game would have been completely different too). "Yeah I didn't really play well, so." Aronian.

Notes to the final round of play in the PGN section. I will try and catch up with Round 13 next week.

Final Standings: 1st Anand 8.5/14 2nd Karjakin 7.5 3rd Kramnik 7 4th Mamedyarov 7 5th Andreikin 7 6th Aronian 6.5 7th Svidler 6.5 8th Topalov 6

FIDE Candidates Tournament 2014 (14)

Mark Crowther (Mon Mar 31 01:17:00 2014)