M-Tel Masters 2006 - Round 2 Report

Indian Grand Master, Vishwanathan Anand, today demolished world champion and local favourite ,Veselin Topalov, in a Spanish closed variation at the M-tel Masters chess championship being held in Sofia, Bulgaria.

In other games played today, GM Peter Svidler beat former FIDE World Champion GM Ruslan Ponomariov in a Spanish( Closed, 8.h3 Bb7 9.d3 d6) game. The game was highly tactical and evenly poised for most of the time. But the vast experience of Svidler won out in the end with a superior pawn structure.

And In the third game, Kamsky played a new idea in the Spanish with 13.Rb1 against Bacrot and backed up his novelty with strong play that netted a pawn. The rook and pawn endgame they reached "should" be drawn, but it turned into an adventure. Several times it looked like a simple draw, but Bacrot avoided the simple and Kamsky kept up the pressure. It came all the way down to rook versus knight with no pawns! This is tricky but usually drawn at the master level but both players were terribly short on time (no time increment in Sofia) and reaching the seventh hour of play, it was far from tablebase perfect. It was drawn, then lost, then drawn, then finally Kamsky put the hammer down after the Frenchman's final mistake.

Standings:
Anand Vishwanathan 2.0/2
Svidler Peter 1.5/2
Kamsky Gata 1.5/2
Topalov Veselin 0.5/2
Ponomariov Ruslan 0.5/2
Bacrot Etione 0/2

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Category: Chess , M-Tel Masters