This Monday's ChessBase Show: Kasparov vs. Anand

As many of you know, I do a live show on ChessBase's Playchess.com server every week. (Details about accessing both live and archived shows can be found here, and click here for a list of games covered in all past shows.)

This week's show presents a game that shows Kasparov's chess abilities in all their glory: his tremendous playing strength, his fantastic opening preparation and his psychological toughness. Nor for that matter does Anand come out poorly - his defense in the game was extremely resourceful; it's just that there was too much to combat under the circumstances.

The game I'm referring to is the 10th game of their 1995 World Championship match. After a series of 8 draws, Anand had won game 9 and had the psychological momentum in the match. Unfortunately, Kasparov had devised a staggering improvement over his play in game 6 (Kasparov reports being so excited about his findings that it upset his play in game 9!), which began like this:

Kasparov-Anand, games 6 & 10:

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Nxe4 6.d4 b5 7.Bb3 d5 8.dxe5 Be6 9.Nbd2 Nc5 10.c3 d4 11.Ng5 dxc3 12.Nxe6 fxe6 13.bxc3 Qd3



In game 6, Kasparov continued with 14.Nf3, and while he maintained some initiative throughout, it wasn't enough to achieve anything substantial. In game 10, however, he produced something really special - tune in to see what it was!