White to play and win

Vishy Anand – who has recently become the highest rated player in the world – just ahead of Kramnik and Topalov (the latter’s prowess may be based on cheating) just won this game as white. See if you can see how he forced a win in this position. Over the fold is a further fact that makes the effort more impressive still.The game was played in a blindfold tournament!

If you want to play through the game without getting out a chessboard, let the net do it for you. Go to this page and then copy and paste the pgn file below.

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1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Be3 e5 7. Nb3 Be6 8.
Qd2 Be7 9. f3 O-O 10. O-O-O Nbd7 11. g4 b5 12. Rg1 Nb6 13. Na5 Qc7 14. g5
Nfd7 15. Nd5 Bxd5 16. exd5 Nxd5 17. Qxd5 Qxa5 18. Bd3 Qc7 19. g6 Nf6 20.
gxf7+ Kh8 21. Rxg7 Kxg7 22. Rg1+ Kh8 23. Bh6 Ng4 24. Rxg4 Rxf7 25. Qxa8+
1-0

1. Event “Amber Blindfold”[↩]
2. Site “Monte Carlo MNC”[↩]
3. Date “2007.03.22”[↩]
4. Round “5”[↩]
5. White “Anand,V”[↩]
6. Black “Van Wely,L”[↩]
7. Result “1-0”[↩]
8. WhiteElo “2779”[↩]
9. BlackElo “2683”[↩]
10. EventDate “2007.03.17”[↩]
11. ECO “B90”[↩]