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In 2011, the top 4 players in the world (Viswanathan Anand, Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik and Levon Aronian) took part in the Botvinnik Memorial rapidplay tournament. It was to be one of Magnus Carlsen’s worst tournament performances as the 20 year old finished with just 1.5/6 (bear in mind, Magnus was already the second highest-rated player of all-time behind Garry Kasparov).
It was strange that a tournament in memory of Mikhail Botvinnik would be at rapidplay tournament controls as Botvinnik was an outspoken opponent of faster time controls.
In this video, GM Damian Lemos analyzes one of the most interesting games from the tournament: Kramnik vs Carlsen.
Magnus Carlsen admits that Kramnik was one of his chess heroes while growing up but the dog-eat-dog world of competitive chess meant any warm feelings soon thawed.
The surprises started immediately with 1.Nf3 b5!?, the Polish Defense. This crazy-looking chess opening for Black has actually been played successfully by Anatoly Karpov, one of the last players you’d expect to play such a committal move.
With 1…b5, Magnus Carlsen is preparing to fianchetto his bishop with …Bb7, just as if he’d played …b6. The advantage of the Polish Defense is that the b5 pawn makes it difficult for White to play c4, something Vladimir Kramnik would typically expect to do after 1.Nf3.
The Botvinnik Memorial tournament had the unusual feature of getting the Super GM players to come into an isolation booth and voice their opinions on how the game was going.
Vladimir Kramnik had this to say about the position after Magnus Carlsen’s critical 12th move:
“The opening was quite strange. 1.Nf3 b5 is something from the 19th century. I didn’t know anything there, but I think I played logically and in my view my position now is clearly better, maybe even close to won, objectively.”
Watch how Vladimir Kramnik snowballs a positional advantage into a deadly kingside attack!
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