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Anand blitzes Fritz

Vishwanathan Anand is on a roll.

Having knocked over three of the top players in the world, including world champion Garri Kasparov and number two Vladimir Kramnik, in the recent rapid chess tournament in Frankfurt, he went one better and defeated the world's champion chess computer, Fritz 5, in a mini-match dubbed as the Frankfurt Classic Duel, late on Saturday night.

One feature of Anand's play in recent times is a new-found ability to pace himself over a tournament. Earlier, he would play flat out in every game, and more often than not burn out by the final stages. Now, he tends to assess each game beforehand, decide whether he can afford a draw or whether he needs to go for a win.

The recent four-player tournament which Anand won, beating Kramnik in the final, produced one instance of this tendency, when in the penultimate round, he allowed Vassily Ivanchuk to escape with a draw despite having him on the ropes on time control.

The duel with Fritz underlined this new facet in the Indian ace. In game one, Anand went flat out to win -- and kept hammering away at the wizard computer, for all of 94 moves, before Fritz finally acknowledged the inevitable.

Having got the win, Anand then throttled back in game two, and just coasted through to a draw that gave him the tie, 1.5-0.5.

In game one, Anand played the black side in a textbook Spanish Opening, concentrating on systematically reducing the material on the board, starting with a queen exchange as early as move eight, refining the game down with each successive exchange he forced the computer into.

A wrong pawn push on the 42nd, by Fritz, gave Anand the little opening he needed, to launch an attack on the computer's queenside, systematically knocking over pawns.

One complication was that both players had opposite coloured bishops, which complicates the endgame and almost inevitably pushes it into a draw. Displaying perfect endgame technique, however, Anand chipped away at white's position, finally forcing the computer to capitulate when only a few seconds remained on its clock.

In game two, Anand with white opted for the English Opening, a Vladimir Kramnik favourite which the Indian ace rarely employs. Fritz countered with the aggressive Tarrasch Defence, but Anand displayed an ability for sound, solid defence and pushed the computer into drawing the game after 46 moves.

Fritz 5, which is ahead of Deep Blue (the computer Kasparov took on in a tournament last year, only to lose), is the latest commercial version of the Fritz series, and has been developed by the German-firm ChessBase.

Leading grandmasters use it for their analysis. However, the matchplay version of Fritz 5, which faced Anand, featured a computer considerably faster than the commercial version. Developed by Siemens Nixdorf, Anand's opponent was running on dual Pentium II board with 333 mhz CPUs, each having 256MB temporory memory.

As per FIDE ratings, Fritz has 2580 as its ELO rating. Anand, for the record, has 2770. The catch of course for the human player is the computer's far more comprehensive memory and database, and its incredibly fast search and retrieve ability when it comes to analysing each move. This speed of 'thought' gives the computer an edge over the human mind -- more so when the game is played on tight time controls, in the rapid chess format.

Anand, however, is no slouch when it comes to rapid thinking -- and it is this facility that negates the computer's natural advantage.

For the chess world, the match up between Anand and Fritz was the long awaited sequel to the ongoing man versus machine battle. Kasparov's defeat at the 'hands' of Deep Blue last summer had the doomsday prophets arging that the machine would always be superior to man.

At the time, Anand had maintained that Kasparov had gone about it wrong, and that it was possible to defeat the computer -- a statement that, in the view of some experts at the time, was a display of uncharacteristic arrogance. However, backing it was the fact that Vishy Anand has never, till date, lost or even drawn a game against a computer, having won every game he played. The draw in the second game of this duel with Fritz is in fact his first -- and it was obvious from the first few moves that Anand, having won the first game, had decided not to stretch himself needlessly, since a draw would give him the championship.

Anand is a bit of a computer buff, using the Mobile 700 as his main weapon during preparation -- in fact, he once described it as his "darling", and when a reporter asked him a direct question about his better half, the Indian ace, who is known for his quirky sense of humour, replied, "Oh, she is my wife, this is my darling!"

Interestingly, Anand also uses a Fritz, running on a Siemens Nixdorf Primergy 460-server, for his own preparations, playing countless games against it as he seeks to fine tune his own match strategies. This is a commercially available server with a dual Pentium II board with two 333 Mhz CPUs. Each has 256 Mbytes of RAM, which is useful since at the expected speed of play, Fritz will fill between 200 to 300 MB of transposition tables between its moves.

The organisers of the tournament decided they wanted the strongest possible opponent to go up against Fritz 5 in this latest tournament, and it is a measure of the respect Anand is held in, in the chess world, that they choose him over Kasparov.

Game 1: Spanish Opening: White: Fritz 5; Black: Vishwanathan Anand

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. O-O Nxe4 5. d4 Nd6 6. Bxc6 dxc6 7. dxe5 Nf5 8. Qxd8 Kxd8 9. Nc3 Ke8 10. Rd1 a5 11. h3 h6 12. b3 Bb4 13. Bb2 Bxc3 14. Bxc3 c5 15. Rd2 b6 16. Rad1 Be6 17. a4 Ne7 18. Ne1 g5 19. f3 Nc6 20. Kf2 Ke7 21. Bb2 Rhd8 22. c4 Rxd2 23. Rxd2 Bf5 24. Ke3 Rd8 25. Rxd8 Nxd8 26. f4 gxf4 27. Kxf4 Bb1 28. Nf3 Bc2 29. Nd2 Ne6 30. Kf3 Kf8 31. Ke3 Kg7 32. g4 Kg6 33. Kf3 h5 34. Kf2 hxg4 35. hxg4 Bd1 36. Kg3 Kg7 37. Kh4 Kf8 38. Ba1 Ke7 39. Kg3 Nf8 40. Bb2 Ke6 41. Ba1 Ng6 42. g5 Kf5 43. e6 Kxe6 44. Bf6 Ne5 45. Kf4 Nd3 46. Ke3 Nc1 47. Bd8 Kd7 48. Bf6 Nxb3 49. Nxb3 Bxb3 50. Kd2 Bxc4 51. Kc3 Be2 52. Kd2 Bf3 53. Kc2 Kc8 54. Be5 Kb7 55. Bf6 c4 56. Kd2 Bc6 57. Kc3 Bxa4 58. Kxc4 Bd7 59. Kb3 Be6 60. Ka4 c6 61. Be7 Ka6 62. Ka3 c5 63. Kb2 c4 64. Kc3 b5 65. Kd4 b4 66. Kc5 c3 67. Bf6 Bd7 68. Bd4 Kb7 69. Bg7 Be8 70. Bf6 Kc7 71. Be5 Kb7 72. Bf6 Bd7 73. Bg7 c2 74. Bb2 Bc6 75. Kc4 Kc7 76. Bc1 Kd7 77. Kb3 Kd6 78. Kxc2 Kc5 79. Be3 Kc4 80. Kb1 a4 81. Bf4 a3 82. Bd6 Bd5 83. Kc1 Kb3 84. Kd2 Ka4 85. Be5 b3 86. Kc1 Be4 87. Bc3 Kb5 88. Bf6 Kc6 89. Bc3 Kd5 90. Ba1 Ke6 91. Bd4 Kf5 92. Bf6 Kg6 93. Bc3 Kxg5 94. Bd4 0-1

Game two: English Opening (Tarrasch Defence); White: Vishy Anand; Black: Fritz 5 1. Nf3 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 c5 4. g3 Nc6 5. Bg2 d5 6. cxd5 Nxd5 7. O-O Be7 8. d4 O-O 9. Nxd5 exd5 10. dxc5 Bxc5 11. Bg5 f6 12. Bd2 Be6 13. e3 Qd7 14. Bc3 Rad8 15. Rc1 Bb6 16. a3 Bh3 17. b4 Bxg2 18. Kxg2 Rfe8 19. Qb3 Qf5 20. Qc2 Qh5 21. a4 a6 22. a5 Bc7 23. Qb2 Rd7 24. b5 Nxa5 25. bxa6 bxa6 26. Bxa5 Bxa5 27. Qa2 Bb6 28. Qxa6 Bc7 29. Rfd1 Qf5 30. Rc5 Red8 31. Rdc1 Bd6 32. Rc8 Qe4 33. Qa8 Be7 34. R1c7 Rd6 35. Qa7 Rxc8 36. Rxc8 Kf7 37. Qd4 Ra6 38. Rc7 g6 39. Qxe4 dxe4 40. Nd4 Ke8 41. g4 Ra2 42. Rc8 Kd7 43. Rh8 Bc5 44. Rxh7 Kd6 45. Kf1 Ra1 46. Kg2 Ra2 Draw agreed

One interesting sidelight -- in both games, Anand ended up with more time remaining on his clock than the supposedly faster computer.