BONN game III

Anand strikes the first blow.

It needn't have been a loss for Kramnik if he had put his Queen elsewhere.

Move 25.Qe2 was the losing move for White.

There were moments of great subtlety in this game. Far beyond my comprehension, although I was puzzled at the right time. First of all Anand's move 8....a6. Not that it was a novelty, but it was a psychological dart. Apparently. So Kasparov said.

Then there was a similarity to two games from 1946. The move order between move 12 and 15 was different and Anand may have been trying to trip Kramnik up, seeing that they were obviously both aware of the existence of these games, played over 60 years ago.
The outcome was that Black had to wait with Rg8.

I hope somebody somewhere will explain it to me.

Kramnik was using more time than Anand. He seemed to be trying to stir things up. This became clear at move 18 when he initiated an unexpected exchange on the =f4= square.
Actually, for a change I had seen this coming. It was something i would have played, even though the engines (including the powerful 8 proc Rybka ChessOK ) hadn't offered this in their top choices.
I was proud of myself, even though nobody took much notice.

Coming out of that scuffle, White had a choice of 19.Nxd4 and 19.Rxd4, and he opted for the former. Kramnik had by now used up one whole hour more than Anand. 44mins vs 1hr 44 mins.







Several forced sequences after move 25.Qb3 in my alternate versions. All leading to a firm draw by move 40.