On Thursday as the Bilbao Masters tournament resumed play into Round 4 nobody expected that former World Champion Viswanathan Anand would be offering up such a scathing criticism of his own game. Anand fought back hard and tournament commentators believed that he had a fighting chance to win the game but lost on time. Anand had this to say about his loss:
Today was perhaps the worst game of my life. I’ve never made so many ridiculous moves.
For a man of Vishy’s chess playing caliber it is hard to imagine such a devastating loss occurring in high-level chess, but it does happen! Just when I or others think that the 5-minute blitz game that was bombed at 2AM on Chess.com was the worst game of our lives…there are things worse than that. Judge for yourself by replaying Vishy’s Round 4 game against Anish Giri in its entirety:
[pgn][Event “VIII Chess Masters Final”]
[Site “Bilbao”]
[Date “2015.10.30”]
[Round “4”]
[White “GM Giri, Anish(NED)”]
[Black “GM Anand, Viswanathan(IND)”]
[Result “1-0”]
[ECO “A22”]
1. c4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. g3 Bb4 4. Bg2 O-O 5. e4 Bxc3 6. bxc3 c6 7. Nf3 Nxe4 8.
O-O d6 9. Nxe5 dxe5 10. Bxe4 Be6 11. Ba3 Re8 12. Qb1 Qxd2 13. Qxb7 Nd7 14. Bxc6
Reb8 15. Qa6 Rb6 16. Qa4 Rc8 17. Rad1 Qxd1 18. Rxd1 Rbxc6 19. Qxa7 R6c7 20. Qe3
Rxc4 21. Bb4 h6 22. a4 Nf6 23. Qxe5 Re4 24. Qa5 Kh7 25. f3 Re2 26. Qb5 Ra2 27.
g4 Re8 28. Bc5 Kg8 29. Re1 Ra8 30. Bd4 R2xa4 31. h4 Ra2 32. Qb1 Bd5 33. Qf5 Be6
34. Qf4 Nd7 35. Rf1 Nf8 36. Rf2 R2a5 37. Qg3 Bc4 1-0[/pgn]
Read more on the match between Anand and Giri on Chess24.com.