Garry Kasparov became winner of Botvinnik Memorial

Garry Kasparov wrapped up the final match of the Botvinnik Memorial with a sparkling three game winning streak against world champion Vladimir Kramnik. This made Kasparov the winner of the Botvinnik Memorial as the first two matches were drawn. The world’s top-ranked player notched the smoothest win of the match with sharp queenside play in game six. Then came game seven, probably the most attractive game of the match. Kasparov gave up his queen for rook and bishop in a line introduced by Alexei Shirov against Gelfand last year. In that game the players quickly agreed to a draw, but here Kramnik needed to play for a win and he kept the pieces on the board. White’s initiative was short-lived and Kasparov’s pieces sprang to life against the white royalty. On move 36 the portrait of domination was complete and Kramnik’s forces were completely paralyzed. Kasparov launched game eight with an aggressive pawn sacrifice and creative play based on trapping the black queen. Kramnik, as he so often does, defended precisely and then gave up his own queen for rook and bishop to break white’s attack. Instead of giving Kasparov a dose of his game seven medicine, however, Kramnik played one of the few real blunders of the event and hung a full rook to a queen fork. This win clinched the blitz match for Kasparov, making him the winner of the Botvinnik Memorial since the classical and rapid matches had been drawn. (Mikhail Botvinnik was famously against blitz chess and is quoted as saying that he had only played one such game in his life, on a train.) The show went on but Kasparov’s concentration had clearly lapsed. He played the weakest game of the day, hung several pawns, and was quickly rolled up as Kramnik scored a consolation win. Kasparov pressed for a win again in the final game and had the champion on the ropes early on. 26.Qxh7 would have done the job, but Kasparov played another line that allowed Kramnik – again defending tremendously – to make it into a pawn-down queen ending that ended drawn after the players banged out 20 moves at lightning speed with scant seconds on their clocks. The final score was 6.5 – 3.5 in favor of Kasparov. Press conference followed the blitz match. Questions about FIDE, about world championship rematches, and other such fare were covered. Kasparov was content to have bounced back from the terrible disappointment of losing the final rapid game the night before. Kramnik acknowledged having been outplayed in the blitz match and said he would liked to have played more games.