Another memorable outing for Anand

Leon: Viswanathan Anand staged a superb rally to score a comprehensive 2.5-1.5 victory over Fide champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan to win the 18th Magistral Ciudad de Leon chess tournament here.

In what was a great comeback, Anand, trailing 0-1 after losing the first game, won the second and the fourth game and drew the third board to attest his superiority once again in the rapid version of the game (as reported in Monday’s Late City edition).

Having earlier beaten prodigious Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen in the semi-finals, it turned out to be another memorable outing for the world No. 2 here after he had won the advance chess title on three previous occasions on leon soil.

“It’s nice to win once again in Leon. I am quite happy with the way I am playing. I know there’s still lots of chess to come this year,” Anand said. “I will defend my title at the chess classic of Mainz against Alexander Grischuk and then there is the world championship in Argentina, plus a few other events.”

The victory in the fourth game for the Indian ace was a real treasured one as he accomplished a fine task in the final game with a piece sacrifice that resulted in a winning endgame almost instantly.

Starting off with the anti-marshall opening set-up, Anand could only get a miniscule advantage out of the opening but once Kasimdzhanov erroneously embarked on the exchange of queens, Anand was quick to spot a brilliant knight sacrifice that forced the swap of all black queen side pawns and instantly white’s own pawns had a telling effect.

With hapless knights doing nothing to salvage the position, Kasimdzhanov found nothing to counter menacing white forces and called it day on the 39th move.

Earlier in the day, the third game of the match had ended in a draw. Playing the white side of a Sicilian Taimanov with the scores tied, Kasimdzhanov first sacrificed a pawn and later won two to arrive at a rook and minor piece ending with clearly the better prospects.

However, Anand’s defensive skills were yet again on display as he slowly got counterplay and eventually liquidated to a drawn rook and pawns endgame. The longest game in the match, it lasted 69 moves.

“I fell in to a trap where I lost a pawn and then it already became somewhat difficult. Probably there was better ways to defend but I was just getting steadily outplayed till I saw one trap and he fell for it,” Anand said about the game.

The second game had given Anand the much needed equaliser after a rather unexpected loss.