Anand's Immortal: Aronian v Anand, Wijk aan Zee 2013
Viswanathan Anand played this game against Levon Aronian in round 4 of the Tata Steel tournament at Wijk aan Zee in January 2013. It is known as Anand's Immortal, it is called one of his greatest masterpieces, and Chess.com ranked it the third-best game of all time, behind Kasparov's Immortal and the Opera Game.
The whole game
The opening is a Semi-Slav, Meran Variation, and both players knew the theory well; the new ideas start at move 12.
What Stockfish makes of it
We had Stockfish check every move.
12.Ng5 and 14.f4
12.Ng5 is usually marked as dubious. Stockfish disagrees: it is its first choice, and the position stays about level after Black's 12...c5 and 13.Nxh7. The real slip was 14.f4. 14.h3, which Wikipedia's annotations recommend, keeps the balance; after 14.f4 Black is about half a pawn better.
15...Bc5 and 16...Nde5!!: the sacrifices
15...Bc5 offers the bishop to bring Black's queen to d4. Aronian declined it with 16.Be2, and Stockfish says that was the real mistake: taking with 16.dxc5 would have left White only about half a pawn worse, against nearly three pawns after 16.Be2. Anand then gave up a knight with 16...Nde5!!, clearing the way for ...Bxd4+ and ...Nf2. Aronian's next two moves, 17.Bxg4 and 18.Kh1, were each his only way to stay in the game.
19...f5!: shutting the queen out
White took the rook on f8, and 19...f5! cut off White's defence against the black queen. It was Black's only strong move: Stockfish rates Black more than three and a half pawns better after it, and the next best only about two. 21...Qxg6 was also the only strong move.
The end, and a stronger move
After 23.Qd3 Aronian could see no way out, and resigned after 23...Be3. Stockfish's best defence at move 23 was 23.Rf3, though Black is winning after that too. Anand's 23...Be3 wins easily, but Stockfish finds 23...Qh4 even stronger.
How we checked
- The moves are from Wikipedia's page on the game. We replayed every one with python-chess: all are legal.
- The engine: Stockfish 16.1 checked every move at depth 22, and the key moments again at depth 26. "A pawn better" is Stockfish's measure of the position, not a count of material.
- The history and the named opinions are from the Wikipedia article.
Try it. Real positions, set at your level, every answer checked against the board. No account needed to start.
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