Chennai: The second game of the FIDE World Championship between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen saw another repetition of moves and the draw was agreed on move 25 here on Sunday.
The defending champion Anand started with 1.e4 and the challenger Carlsen responded with Caro-Kann defence, which was a slight surprise. Carlsen rarely used Caro-Kann before, the last time being back in 2011. Anand had recent experience in this line as he won a nice game against GM Ding Liren, but this time he deviated on move 14 by choosing the seemingly sharper 14.0-0-0.
The pair of knights were exchanged in the center and then Carlsen advanced his Queen to d5 offering another trade. To the surprise of the commentators and audience alike, Carlsen decided to accepted the trade instead of continuing to press with 18.Qg4.
The resulting endgame was equal. Anand placed his Rooks on the kingside, probing the opponent’s pawn shield and forcing the repetition of moves.
Anand said after the match, “The position that was today …. I had studied it in the past, that was a very complicated position. And I did not expect it, that is clear. So, I had to decide whether I wanted to play blind or allow him to catch me in to much more, into details that I would have had.”
“I closed at something like on the solid lines thinking that, when you got there… there are alternatives. There was nothing terribly convincing for him. He went straight to the queen exchange and so on. Well, I think I have a taken a prudent decision today. Yes, after the queen exchange there was nothing much happening. It was sharp. I thought he had more details than me in the line,” he added.
Meanwhile Carlsen said, “I think it is little bit similar to my start in the Candidates tournament, I had an easy draw and opened with black pieces and my opponent opened with the black pieces in the second game. And that took off quite quickly. I say what happened here, like Vishy said so far we are settling in a bit, especially when you are caught out in preparations.'
Courtesy: www.fide.com
