MTel R7: Topalov beats Anand, Ponomariov wins

Round seven report

Standings

Round 7 wrap-up: Another thrilling round in Sofia and a lot of great chess. Topalov beat Anand with black to move back to an even score. Bacrot fended off Kamsky to hold the leader to a draw. Ponomariov notched his first win of the event by outplaying Svidler. Kamsky now leads by a full point with three rounds to play.

Topalov returned the favor and beat Anand in a wonderfully tactical game. Anand looked to be trying to play it safe by playing c4 and castling kingside instead of the usual Najdorf opposite side castling melee. Topalov sacrificed a pawn to land a rook on the seventh rank and White had to deal with dangerous threats on every move. Then Topalov gave up a bishop and knight for a rook and pawns to reach a difficult endgame of two rooks and four pawns for Black versus rook, bishop, knight and two rook pawns for White. A pair of rooks soon left the board and it was clear that only Topalov and his kingside pawn mass had winning chances. He quickly activated his king and when the white h-pawn fell defense was hopeless. A tremendous game from the FIDE champion.

Ruslan Ponomariov displayed his trademark tenacity by grinding out a minimal advantage out of a Maroczy Bind against Peter Svidler. He used his better minor and active heavy pieces to apply pressure and eventually Black conceded a concrete advantage by capturing the knight on d5 and giving White a passer. It was the dreaded last move of the time control. 40..Qe6 looks feasible.

Gata Kamsky was close to running away with the event by beating Etienne Bacrot, but the young Frenchman woke up in time to play tough defense and earn a draw. Not exactly what you hope for when you have white, but when things aren't going well you have to look for those silver linings. If Black wants to go all out for a win, preventing White from playing g4 by playing 27..g4 and then ..h4 looks like a try, but Kamsky had no reason to take undue risks. He has the white pieces against Anand tomorrow and white against Topalov in the final round.

Video impressions by Vijay Kumar

• Start of round seven

Picture gallery

This city always reminds me of a British grandmaster friend, who many years ago was playing in an important event here. "I'll be leaving on Thursday," he told his mother. "Where to, dear?" she asked. "To the super tournament in Bulgaria." "Which city?" "Mum, I told you, it's the capital. Don't you remember – a girl's name?" "What was it, dear? Sally?"

No, come on, it's Sofia! A city that grows on you. The people are generally friendly, and nobody seems out to get you. Most speak enough English for useful communication. Everything is very inexpensive by European standards. We stopped using the trams, which cost about 20 cents a ride, and switched to taxis, which charge you $2-3 for anywhere you want to go. Their fuel gauges show empty, all of them, and the reason is that they actually are. The taxis run on natural gas, which is taxed much more lightly than petrol.

A street through the central part of Sofia, with the tramcar lines.

The book market, with hundreds of metres of open-air stalls.

Some new Bulgarian friends, who were friendly enough, but conversationally restrained. The man on the right was more talkative and told me that the silent ones were famous authors.

A view from the Grand Hotel into the park, where there is a lot of chess going on

In the park people crowd around an M-Tel chess broadcast centre to follow the games on TV screens. There is intense discussion and obvious enthusiasm for the event.

So if you are interested in chess, why not play yourself? There are tables and boards in the park, and dozens of games going at any given time.

These two spent quite some time in an astute postmortem of their game

The fountain statue to end all fountain statues – even if the pond is empty

The reception area for the tournament, a very popular place where people are always stopping to ask questions they actually should know the answer to.

These three know everything about the event – hence their popularity

the games of round seven have started

Peter Svidler facing former FIDE world champion Ponomariov with black

At move 33 Anand is already in some trouble

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