Kramnik needs at least one win to stay alive

The second half of the world championship match started with a quiet opening. The colours switched over after game 6 and Anand received his second white in succession. The champion who leads 3-0, opened with the now-expected 1.d4 and challenger Vladimir Kramnik decided to try the Slav Defence, which Anand has himself used so effectively when he had black.

Anand could not have been surprised since the Slav is part of Kramnik’s normal repertoire. However, the game did not head into the wild vortex of Meran or Moscow variations, which Anand favours. Instead Kramnik played 4. –dxc4 and 5. –Bf5. This is akin to a Queens Gambit accepted. It is a quiet positional line originally popularised by former champion Vassily Smyslov.

After White recaptures the pawn, he retains a small advantage with greater space in a quiet position. Black has a sound structure and easy play for his pieces. After 20 moves, the game looked balanced with both players having expended less than 30 minutes. An exchange of queens occurred on move 21 with both players continuing to play fast.

Black seems to have equalised comfortably but winning chances for either side appear to be very moot. The material balance is down to 2R+B (White) versus 2R+Kt and one set of rooks are likely to be exchanged soon on the open c-file.

Kramnik has started to chip away at white’s centre pawns. He may be hoping to make some headway with his knight, which is potentially a better minor piece than Anand’s bishop. However, white does keep his space edge in most situations and that could count for more than the better minor piece.

Kramnik’s conservative choice in the opening answers one question — he is not going to take inordinate risks to try and reduce the lead. At least, not when he has the black pieces. Presumably he will try to break through with white in games 8 and 10 since he has to win at least one game between games 7 and 10 to keep a mathematical chance alive. Games 8 and 10 are, therefore, likely to be tightrope walks especially if Anand plays the high-risk Meran again.