World Chess Champion Viswanathan won the 1st GRENKE Chess Classic with a score of 6.5/10 half a point clear of Fabiano Caruana who couldn't covert a winning position against Daniel Fridman to take the event into a rapid and possibly blitz playoff. This is Anand's first triumph since Morelia/Linares 2008 and this win was clearly important for him (although he could only speculate when interviewed about it as Caruana was still playing) Anand won an interesting but flawed struggle against a dispirited Arkadij Naiditsch whose tournament had clearly run its course after missing a win in round 8 and losing against Fabiano Caruana. Anand followed the game Kasparov vs the World for some time and obtained what he thought was a superior position with knight and two pawns vs rook. Anand was highly critical of his 24...a5 suggesting 24...Rc7 was much better. Naiditsch managed to escape into a drawn Rook and Pawn ending but "he really underestimated the problem" according to Anand and blitzed away was lost after 33.Ke1 when 33.Ke2 would have saved the game with the key tempi becoming apparent if play followed the course of the game. Fabiano Caruana had to be patient against Daniel Fridman's exchange Slav but got some chances as Fridman got into time trouble and then blundered a pawn to a simple tactic. Then Caruana looked like he was going to convert until Fridman found the tricky 54. f5+! but recovered to get a winning position again which he would have got after 65...f4! instead 65...Ke4? 66.d5 won an important tempo and the game was drawn. Caruana has fought well but felt his bad form from Wijk aan Zee finally caught up with him. Michael Adams drew a rather strange game against Georg Meier who had the chance to win the exchange but blundered almost immediately allowing Adams counterplay. Meier decided not to win the exchange at all and the game was soon draw. Meier said afterwards "In the second half probably people thought a different player joined the tournament because the first half it was just shocking what I did." He certainly looked impressive in the second half. He finished level with his opponent Adams who played pretty well but found wins very hard to some by. A very interesting tournament altogether. Final Standings: Anand 6.5pts, Caruana 6 pts, Adams, Meier 5pts, Naiditsch 4 pts and Fridman 3.5pts.

1st GRENKE Chess Classic Baden-Baden 2013 (10)

Mark Crowther (Sun Feb 17 22:24:00 2013)