What a difference a rest day makes. At the end of game two of the €1m world title match in Sochi, Vishy Anand had the body language of a loser and Magnus Carlsen knew it.
Anand was under pressure for most of the game and cracked near the time control when he made a novice blunder, mate or loss of the queen, in a position where he could still fight. During their brief post-mortem at the board before the press conference Carlsen, 23, stood up, leant over the board and confidently showed variations in reply to Anand’s timid questions. It was master and student.
On the rest day Anand spent several hours in the gym to unwind his tension and in game three everything clicked for the Indian veteran, 44. Deep opening preparation is one of his major strengths and in their 2013 match in Chennai Carlsen avoided all opening bombs. But for some reason, hubris or overconfidence, he chose to meet Anand’s 1 d4 by a dubious line in the Queen’s Gambit Declined.
The safe equalising route is 7...Nh5, exchanging knight for bishop. Instead Carlsen allowed a sharp variation known from Levon Aronian v Michael Adams at Bilbao a few months ago. It was playing with fire, since White gets a monster pawn at c7, and sure enough Anand unleashed his improvement at move 20.
By move 24 it was catastrophic for Carlsen since Anand was still in his prep while the Norwegian was already short of time. Anand made strong choices at moves 26 and 28, provoking the fatal pawn capture which lost Carlsen a bishop and induced resignation. Curiously the winning plan in both games two and three was to triple White’s queen and rooks on an open line.
The score is now 2.5-2.5 after two steady draws. Games six on Saturday and seven on Monday are suddenly critical for Carlsen, who has two whites in a row. If he cannot restore his lead, Anand with three whites in the last five games will start to fancy his chances.
Play starts at noon and you can watch live and free, with grandmaster and computer move-by-move commentaries plus global tweets, at sochi2014.fide.com.
Vishy Anand v Magnus Carlsen, third game
1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nf3 d5 4 Nc3 Be7 5 Bf4 O-O 6 e3 Nbd7 7 c5 c6 8 Bd3 b6 9 b4 a5 10 a3 Ba6 11 Bxa6 Rxa6 12 b5 cxb5 13 c6 Qc8 14 c7 b4 15 Nb5 a4 16 Rc1 Ne4 17 Ng5 Ndf6 18 Nxe4 Nxe4 19 f3 Ra5 20 fxe4! Rxb5 21 Qxa4 Ra5 22 Qc6 bxa3 23 exd5 Rxd5 24 Qxb6 Qd7 25 O-O Rc8 26 Rc6! g5 27 Bg3 Bb4 28 Ra1! Ba5? 29 Qa6 Bxc7 30 Qc4 e5 31 Bxe5 Rxe5 32 dxe5 Qe7 33 e6 Kf8 34 Rc1 1-0
3384 1...Qc5+! 2 Qxc5 g1Q+ and Qxc5 wins.
