Anand-Topalov, Round 10

Round 10 of the world chess championship match featured Topalov as White against Anand. As I predicted, Anand varied away from the Slav. However, I had not predicted that he would return to the Grünfeld, which he did use in round 1. Anand deviated first, avoiding the variation with 10...Na5 that had deflected his Knight away from the center and left his King vulnerable to Topalov's attack. Instead, Anand just developed normally while Topalov also developed normally, building up the classic center, resulting in a typical position:

The typical Grünfeld game, when it does not erupt in White embarking on a sacrificial attack on Black's King (which is no longer protected by a Knight because it was exchanged early on c3), winds up going into an endgame dictated by both sides' Pawn structures. White's advantage is having the center d-Pawn and center e-Pawn, particularly the d-Pawn, which Black lacks and therefore can often be pushed all the way to d8, possibly with an exchange of both sides' e-Pawns along the way. The d-Pawn is so key that it was given a mnemonic nickname, "Delroy", by Jonathan Rowson in his wonderful book Understanding the Grünfeld (which I can't believe is out of print at the moment of this post).

Black's advantage is the Queen side majority of the a-Pawn and b-Pawn against White's lone a-Pawn. White's Queen side is loose and weak because of not having a b-Pawn or c-Pawn. Black may end up pushing the b-Pawn all the way.

Topalov quickly got things going by committing to 15 d5, an advance of Delroy. After some inaccuracy by Anand, Topalov got an advantageous position and Anand chose to bail out into an inferior but drawable endgame:

One of the pleasures and mysteries of chess is how one can very often look at a real position and know instantly what opening was played. Here, with Delroy on d5, who would not guess that a Grünfeld was played? The problem in this particular position is that White has the two Bishops. Black has to be very careful not to let a breakthrough happen to either his Queen side Pawns or King side Pawns. As it turned out, Anand defended very well, and after some inaccuracy by Topalov, made the drawn outcome clear by the time this position was achieved:

White has gotten nowhere on the King side, White's King is centralized but has nowhere else to go, Black has blockaded Delroy with his Bishop on d6, Black's a-Pawn and b-Pawn are safely advanced, and finally, White's dark-squared Bishop is completely neutralized by Black's dominating Knight. After Anand's 48...Ba3, trading off that Bishop, the draw was obvious, because he could (and did) go for either White's a-Pawn or d-Pawn to liquidate all of White's winning chances.

The slightly weird thing to me is how Topalov seems to let his Bishops get pushed back to passivity by Knights. We saw this position in round 5:

These kinds of positions were never forced on Topalov. He entered them voluntarily despite their inferiority. Strange. I wonder whether he has been told about his habit, and whether Anand knows about it.

In any case, the match is still tied, and since Anand defended in this game without trouble, I think Topalov's momentum is stopped, and I give them fully even chances for the title. There are only two regular games left, and then if the match is still tied,  there is a tie-break match of rapid games. Now Anand has a fierce reputation for rapid chess, so perhaps if it comes to a tie-break, he has the advantage, but I don't know if that is necessarily the case. They wouldn't be playing a fresh rapid match, but would be playing it after being fatigued from twelve regular games. I don't know who would be more fatigued. So I wouldn't make any predictions right now.