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Time in Yerevan: 11:07,   29 March 2024

Anand wins Masters Final with round to spare

Anand wins Masters Final with round to spare

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 20, ARMENPRESS. The leader of the Armenian men’s chess team Levon Aronian played another draw at the Grand Slam tournament. Aronian faced with Francisco Vallejo Pons. The former world champion Viswanathan Anand is the next opponent of the Armenian GM.

As reports “Armenpress”, citing the official website of the tournament, With one round to go Viswanathan Anand is already certain of tournament victory at the Masters Final in Bilbao. Today both games ended in draws, which means that Anand cannot be caught tomorrow, even if he loses to Aronian.

Suddenly the tournament is already decided! Due to the football scoring system that’s traditionally employed in Bilbao, Anand’s three wins and two draws are good for a four-point lead over Levon Aronian, who has scored four draws and one win. After the two draws today Anand has secured sole victory, while in the classical system Aronian could still have finished in shared first place by beating Anand in the final round.

The game between Anand and Ponomariov was the first to finish. From a Ragozin Defense, the players reached an identical pawn structure as in Anand-Vallejo from the previous round, but in this case the middlegame position was roughly equal.

As Anand explained, there were a few details that made the position quite different. “I was much faster with my counterplay and I still kept both bishops. I would say in comparison with yesterday he was about two, three tempi down.”

Yesterday Ponomariov thought he would be playing Anand, and so the Ukrainian GM had two days to prepare for the tournament leader. He used only one.

“I already had everything more or less in my memory. I tried to rest a little bit,” he said. “It was an interesting game, not so much theory.  But Vishy found some good maneuvers. In the end I even thought I’m slightly worse, but he decided to secure the draw.”

At that point Levon Aronian was still trying to squeeze water from a stone in a rook ending against Paco Vallejo. “Especially since Paco found the right plan with checking on the first rank, I think it will be a draw,” said Anand.

The Spaniard had played a topical line in the Semi-Tarrasch which he had faced himself with the white pieces in his rapid match with the Chinese super talent Wei Yi, in Leon, earlier this year. Still, it was Aronian who came up with the first new move.

 “I am not happy with my play, but I am very happy that I found 11.Bd2,” the Armenian number one said. “I thought I had analyzed everything, but [that move] was very interesting,” Vallejo said. It was clear that White was better, having a more healthy pawn structure, but Vallejo defended well and the draw was justified.

 The fight for first place is over, but the fight for the other places is still open. Ponomariov can still finish in second place if he beats Vallejo tomorrow. For that to happen, Aronian needs to lose to Anand.

 “I always look forward to playing chess, especially against a player who is having such a good tournament. I will do my best to make the game attractive for the spectators,” said Aronian. “You still want to play a good game and play a good tournament. I’ll go and start getting ready for that game,” Anand said.








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