FIDE World Chess Rankings Announced

FIDE has announced the October world chess rankings. Topalov is back in the saddle. There is an ironic twist to the World Chess Championship match between Anand and Kramnik since it will now be No. 5 vs No. 6. Not good for aggressive sellers of this match.

Top 20 Rankings Open Section

 1  Topalov, Veselin  BUL  2791
 2  Morozevich, Alexander  RUS  2787
 3  Ivanchuk, Vassily  UKR  2786
 4  Carlsen, Magnus  NOR  2786
 5  Anand, Viswanathan  IND  2783
 6  Kramnik, Vladimir  RUS  2772
 7  Aronian, Levon   ARM 2757
 8  Radjabov, Teimour  AZE  2751
 9  Leko, Peter   HUN  2747
 10  Jakovenko, Dmitry  RUS  2737
 11  Wang, Yue   CHN  2736
 12  Adams, Michael   ENG  2734
 13  Movsesian, Sergei  SVK  2732
 14  Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar  AZE  2731
 15  Karjakin, Sergey  UKR  2730
 16  Kamsky, Gata   USA  2729
 17  Svidler, Peter   RUS  2727
 18  Shirov, Alexei   ESP  2726
 19  Eljanov, Pavel   UKR  2720
 20  Gelfand, Boris   ISR  2719

Top 20 Rankings Women

 1  Polgar, Judit   HUN  2711
 2  Koneru, Humpy   IND  2618
 3  Hou, Yifan   CHN  2578
 4  Xie, Jun   CHN  2574
 5  Cramling, Pia   SWE  2550
 6  Stefanova, Antoaneta  BUL  2548
 7  Sebag, Marie   FRA  2533
 8  Kosteniuk, Alexandra  RUS  2525
 9  Zhao, Xue   CHN  2518
 10  Danielian, Elina  ARM  2513
 11  Kosintseva, Tatiana  RUS  2513
 12  Cmilyte, Viktorija  LTU  2512
 13  Muzychuk, Anna   SLO  2508
 14  Dzagnidze, Nana  GEO  2503
 15  Ushenina, Anna   UKR  2496
 16  Ruan, Lufei   CHN  2496
 17  Zhu, Chen   QAT  2496
 18  Chiburdanidze, Maia  GEO  2489
 19  Lahno, Kateryna  UKR  2488
 20  Zhukova, Natalia  UKR  2488

Kramnik vs Anand Dortmund SuperGM 2001

Kramnik vs Anand Dortmund SuperGM 2000

Kramnik vs Anand Investbanka Belgrade 1997

After the Las Palmas game, Kramnik and Anand next met at the board at Belgrade in 1997. Anand had to win this game to even their head to head score.

Enjoy the game.



Key Moments of the Game

The game is a semi-slav. Anand plays aggressively out of the opening and pushes pawns with attacking intentions.

Kramnik sacrifices his bishop to attack the open King.

Kramnik is clearly behind on material by move 14 and Anand can easily win the game with precise play, but Anand's 15. Nd7 is a mistake and Kramnik can force a perpetual by sacrificing another bishop (16. Bxc4).

Anand again misses a winning line on move 17, giving Kramnik another chance to draw.

After a couple of more mistakes, Anand starts making the right moves, sacrifices his Rook, regains it and finishes Kramnik off.

Anand's connected pawns are also threatening to Queen. Kramnik cannot give any more checks.

Kramnik vs Anand Las Palmas, 1996

Kramnik went into the head to head lead by beating Anand again in 1996. The game was played at Las Palmas and the opening was a Symmetrical English Double Fianchetto Hedgehog.

A fascinating game, but one riddled with major errors, where Kramnik applied tremendous pressure without his Queen.



Anand played aggressively right from the word go despite having the black pieces. From move 18, Kramnik embarked on a sequence where he eventually sacrificed his Queen. He was counting on his active pieces and the advancing d pawn.

Kramnik played the continuation accurately until Anand blundered with 26 ... Qc4. His previous move 25 .... Rd8 was already a mistake.

Kramnik exchanged to position where he had a Rook and Bishop for a Queen. Not enough, except that he had a pawn on the sixth rank.

Kramnik blundered on move 30 with Rd3 thus giving Anand a chance where he had to play the simple Kf8. But Anand probably wanted to do some damage to the pieces first or see if he could attack King and so he went 30 .... Qe4. It was all over and just a matter of time. The only challenge for Kramnik was to muster courage to get his King out even while approaching the 40th move. He eventually did move the King out of the safety net of the pawns. Anand resigned a few moves later when it is clear that the King can safely hide and the pawn can be Queened.

Kramnik vs Anand Dos Hermanas, 1996

We continue the Kramnik - Anand matches with the game at Dos Hermanas, 1996. By this time, the two players were among the very top players in the world, with Anand having the advantage of having played the World Championship match against Kasparov.

Kramnik won the second decisive game between the two in an Exchange Gruenfeld.



Anand's 19 ... Rae8 and 20 ...Nc4 were one mistake after another, which enabled Kramnik to win an exchange by move 22. Kramnik went for more with 23. h4 which was a mini-blunder. Both the players lost the thread a bit for the next couple of moves.

The game was drawish even as late as move 59, but in a game of several mistakes, Anand played 59. .... Ne5 which was another mistake. 64 ... Bb2 more or less sealed his fate.

From this point on, Kramnik maintained the plus position and Anand's defence brilliance could not save him even though he presented some tricks to Kramnik.
When Anand resigned, one of his pawns was about to fall and the other one could be collected with simple manouvres.

Harikrisha finishes first on tie break at SPICE Cup, Texas Tech

The Category 15 Spice Cup took place at the Texas Tech Student Union Building. Pentala Harikrishna finished first on tie break although he tied with GM Onischuk, GM Kritz, and GM Akobian. Defending champion Eugene Perelshteyn finished 7th.

Final Standings:

1-4 Pentala, Harikrishna g IND 2668 5½
Onischuk, Alexander g USA 2670 5½
Kritz, Leonid g GER 2610 5½
Akobian, Varuzhan g USA 2610 5½
5. Becerra, Julio g USA 2598 5
6. Mikhalevski, Victor g ISR 2592 4½
7. Perelshteyn, Eugene g USA 2555 4
8-9. Kaidanov, Gregory g USA 2605 3½
Miton, Kamil g POL 2580 3½
10. Stefansson, Hannes g ISL 2566 2½

First Decisive Result Kramnik - Anand, Amsterdam 1996

Anand achieved the first decisive result in games between the two great rivals (normal games). It was a long Sicilian Maroczy Bind game that lasted for 108 moves before Anand prevailed.



The most interesting aspect of this game was that Anand played like Kramnik ! Yes, he ground Kramnik out by gaining advantage bit by bit around the middle game stage.

Anand first erred with 19 ... h5 (Ra3 or h6 was required.) The next mistake came at move 26 where Anand played 26 ... Rxc5 (again Ra3 was definitely the best)
Anand escaped a bad position and moved to a slight plus soon enough.

Kramnik found the going tough even as both players played a technically accurate game until move 70-73 when the tired Kramnik made small errors to make the win possible for Anand. After that, it was Anand all the way as he nursed the two extra pawns in a won end game. Kramnik gave up when Anand threatened to Queen his advanced e pawn.