Chennai: It was so near and yet so far, for defending champion Viswanathan Anand against Magnus Carlsen in the third game of the world chess championship here on Tuesday. Despite the challenger facing some anxious moments in the middle game, the third round ended in a 51-move draw after a little over four hours.
The two players now have 1.5 points each. Nine more rounds remain to be played in this 12-game series. Anand will have the advantage of starting the fourth game with white pieces on Wednesday.
Like in Game One, Carlsen began Game Three with a first move Nf3. But, the Norwegian changed course on the third move and the game got transposed to the English opening. The subsequent moves also showed that the opening could be called a reversed Sicilian, as black pushed the pawn before his king also two squares thereby seizing some initiative.
Carlsen also contributed to Anand’s advantage by playing some weak moves. He moved the black bishop twice and his queen made a seven-move pitiable journey from its original square of d1 to h1 to hide behind her castled king.
However, the world no. 1 somehow managed to bring his queen back into play, which helped him get some breathing space on the board. Soon after the literal banishment of the white’s queen from the control over nerve centre, Anand, gained momentum by pushing his flank pawns in the queen side.
Carlsen, in a desperation played pawn move (e3) to open the centre, which computer analysis showed as a sub-opti mal move. But as expected by the computer, Anand did not go for pawn grabbing. So, the e3 move and Anand’s slightly indecisive play in the middle game helped the world no. 1 get out of a bad position.
With time pressure building up, Carlsen and Anand exchanged important pieces and reached a queen, opposite colour bishops and three pawns endgame. While the Indian offered a draw, Carlsen preferred to play till a final position of king and bishop each arrived.
“I think I made a couple of misjudgements in the middle game. My position was worse. Just happy to survive,” Carlsen said in the post-press conference.
He also added that the result was ‘not a disaster either’. Anand agreed that white’s position was looking unpleasant due to black’s two bishops and advancing pawns on the queen side, but then Carlsen was able to generate enough counter play whenever the Indian went on a pawn hunting expedition.
