Kramnik is on

BY: BOBBY ANG

(As published in Chess Piece, BusinessWorld, February 5, 2010. Photo sourced from Corus 2010 official website.)

Being a world champion carries with it a sense of responsibility -- you know that all of your games will be scrutinized under the microscope of the world chess community and as much as possible you don’t want to lose a game. More often than not this causes you to play with caution in every game.

Let us take the example of the 6th world champion Mikhail Botvinnik who won the title in 1948. After that he was not able to win any of his matches as world champion.

In 1951, he drew with David Bronstein over 24 games in Moscow, +5 =14 -5 (meaning 5 wins 14 draws and 5 losses), keeping the world title, but it was a struggle for Botvinnik, who won the penultimate game and drew the last in order to tie the match. In 1954, he drew with Vasily Smyslov at Moscow, +7 =10 -7 and then lost to him in 1957 by +3 =13 -6 also in Moscow.

Botvinnik regained his title in a rematch (+7 =11 -5 )a year later but, in 1960, was convincingly beaten (+2 =13 -6) at Moscow by Tal (only 23 years old then). He once again regained his title in a rematch the next year +10 =6 -5. Finally, in 1963, he lost the title to Tigran Petrosian, by (+2 =15 -5) in Moscow. The International Chess Federation (FIDE) then altered the rules and did not allow Botvinnik a rematch, after which he retired from world championship competition. Take note that in the two matches he won (against Smyslov in 1958 and Tal in 1961), Botvinnik was the challenger and not the champion.

Aside from the title contests, Botvinnik’s results during their period were not so good -- he placed only fifth in the 1951 Soviet Championship, and tied for third in the 1952 Geza Maroczy Memorial tournament in Budapest; and he had also performed poorly in Soviet training contests. He was not even in the Soviet team to the 1952 Chess Olympiad in Helsinki -- the players voted for the lineup and placed Botvinnik on second board, behind Paul Keres; Botvinnik protested and refused to play.

His successor, Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian, also performed poorly as world champion, and it was during this time that being world champion denoted "first among equals" rather than one completely dominating personality.

Viswanathan Anand won the "undisputed" world chess title in 2007 via a double round robin tournament in Mexico City (by the way, it is a big shame that the previous title tournament in San Luis 2005 had a classic tournament book written by Alik Gershon and Igor Nor, while this one Mexico had a really lousy one written by Raymond Keene) ahead of Kramnik, Gelfand, Leko, Svidler, Morozevich, Aronian and Grischuk.

To eliminate all doubt who the numero uno was Anand then defeated Kramnik in a one-on-one match in 2008 (Bonn) +3 =7 -1.

As if relieved that the mantle of responsibility had been lifted from his shoulders, Kramnik has started playing aggressive, enterprising chess again and his results in 2009 have been very impressive: victory in two super tournaments in a row: Dortmund Sparkassen, and the Tal Memorial in Moscow.

Last December Kramnik was second place behind Magnus Carlsen in the London Chess Classic held last month -- his loss in their head-to-head game determined the final placing.

During the Corus Wijk aan Zee tournament held last month Kramnik had the occasion to speak of the challenge posed by the upcoming generation of players:
"Nakamura (that’s Hikaru Nakamura, the US Champion) will have a legitimate chance to win the World Championship .... if all of us quit. No, no, seriously, he’s made a big improvement in the last year. Within a year he will be in the top 10 and anyone in the top 10 has a legitimate chance to become World Champion. But there are other youngsters around. Carlsen is not bad, and this Giri (Anish Giri, Dutch champion) and So (c’mon, do I have to tell you who this is?) are very strong and will be over 2700 soon. I am very happy with this new strong generation of players. It will be a nice challenge for me. As for the tournament, I’m playing genius after genius now, so anything is possible."

Of course, he knows that during their young formative stage his chore would be to beat them all mercilessly in every game. I like to quote this passage from GM Andy Soltis’ "Confessions of a Chess Grandmaser":

"As a [rapidly] ageing master, I can offer some advice. You can avoid a lot of trouble by taking great pains to humiliate the new generation whenever possible over the board. And as often as you can. Arthur Bisguier made the mistake of allowing a draw with Bobby Fischer in their second game. Bobby had forfeited on time in a hopeless position in their first and seemed suitably cowed after that. But after their second game ended in a draw, the psychology was no longer working against Fischer, and he won the next 11 games they played.

Here is Kramnik’s revenge win vs Carlsen.

Carlsen, Magnus (2810) -- Kramnik, Vladimir (2788) [E04]
Corus A Wijk aan Zee NED (9), 26.01.2010
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