SOURCE = http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/mar/19/chess-ronan-bennett-daniel-king

 

Kramnik-Anand, Dortmund 2001. Black to play.

 

More calculation this week. The white pieces are massing for an attack, but with the correct defence it doesn't have to be fatal. Let's see if Ronan can find a way to save Black's position.

 

RB The threat is obvious: White threatens the knight guarding h7, and if Black recaptures on f6 he is either mated on the next move or suffers serious material loss. I can see only two plausible options - 1...g6 and 1...h6 - and what's so dispiriting is that I can see big problems with both. 1...g6 weakens the f6-square, after which White has

2 Rfe1 and if 2...Kg7 3 Bh6 wins the exchange. Clearly not good. But 1...h6 doesn't look much better. As it doesn't make sense to move any of the pieces I'm obviously missing something. What?

 DK 1...g6 2 Rfe1 followed by Rxe7 and Bxf6 is indeed bad for Black - and so is 1... h6 after 2 Bxh6 gxh6 3 Qxh6. The sacrifice must be winning for White. At a glance we can see that White's queen cannot be pushed away, and that Black's pieces are unable to come across to defend the exposed king. White's bishop, knight and rook are all in place to support the attack. A simple rook lift -Rd1-d4-h4 - is threatened, and if 3...Rc7 intending to meet that with ...Rc4, then White can play 4 Nd4 followed by Rd3-g3. I was hoping that Ronan would reject 1...g6 and 1...h6 - the two obvious defences - and that would lead him, by process of elimination, to discover the only other possible continuation - 1...h5!  ("... what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth"). It looks bizarre to advance the pawn in front of the king, but White cannot break through directly: 2 Bxf6 Bxf6 3 Qxh5 g6 (SEE ANIMATED GIF) defends against the mate, and the bishop covers the black squares around the king. Black is fine. Instead, Kramnik had to build up more patiently with 2 Rfe1, and while his piece activity gave him the better chances, Anand, after 2... Nc6 recentralising his knight, was still very much in the game. The process of elimination is a useful and common defensive technique. The consequences of 1... h5 might have been murky, but they were certainly better than the alternatives, so it had to be played.