Anand vs. Carlsen, Chennai 2013 (game six)

On 16 November 2013, Viswanathan Anand had the white pieces and a recent defeat to recover from. The first four games of the championship had been drawn; Magnus Carlsen had broken the deadlock in game five. The sixth could bring the champion level again or widen a gap that already mattered greatly in a twelve-game match.

What distinguished this encounter was neither opening preparation that left an opponent without an answer nor a combination that settled everything at once. The Berlin with d3 led to a manoeuvring position. As pieces disappeared, White’s problem changed shape: first the centre needed coordination, then a decision had to be made about which structure was worth preserving, and finally enough activity had to be found to keep the material deficit from deciding the result.

Fewer pieces, a different kind of difficulty

Exchanges could seem a way to reduce the number of decisions still to be made. Yet reaching a rook ending a pawn down did not mean the defensive problem had been solved. Anand gained clarity about what he had to contain, but Carlsen gained targets he could pressure without immediately committing his position. The question was no longer how to hold every pawn, but which pawns could be surrendered in exchange for activity.

White’s response had substance of its own. Giving up the h-pawn altered Black’s majority and allowed the rook to attack from a distance and the king to join the defence. That phase prevents the game from being told as an uninterrupted demonstration of technical superiority. Black’s structure lost flexibility, White’s pieces found useful work, and the ending continued to offer genuine resistance.

A victory that was not yet settled

The result tempts us to look back on the entire ending as lost. Contemporary analysis does not support that reading: it identifies 60.Ra4 as the decisive error and shows a drawing resource at that very moment. There was a difference between having a defensible position and finding the concrete way to defend it during the game. The activity of Black’s king and the pawn race eventually made a tempo decisive when it might previously have seemed unimportant.

The finish gives meaning to Carlsen’s persistence without turning every one of his decisions into a perfect move. The rook went from attacking pawns to supporting a promotion threat. Anand resigned after Black’s 67th move. The 4-2 score was a major development in the world championship, not its conclusion: the second half of the match still remained. Game six deserves to be remembered for that combination, a win of considerable competitive importance and an ending whose story includes the defences that were still possible.