Baden-Baden's Title Hunt: Anand, Caruana, MVL On Top Boards
Last weekend, OSC Baden-Baden made its intentions clear: It wants to win back the title in the German league. For its matches on Saturday and Sunday, it had Viswanathan Anand, Fabiano Caruana, and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave on the top boards.
Last year, the unthinkable happened: For the first time in a decade, Baden-Baden did not win the Schachbundesliga. It was SG Solingen that finished first instead.
But Baden-Baden is ambitious as ever as became clear last weekend in (and against) Hockenheim. The town in northwest Baden-Württemberg, about 20 km south of Mannheim, is famous for hosting motor-racing events in the Hockenheimring. This weekend, it hosted chess matches with some of the strongest chess players in the world.
Baden-Baden's impressive line-up included three top-10 players, two more 2700+ players, and three players very close to 2700. They defeated the local team 3-5, and with the same players, they crushed SV Griesheim 1976 7.5-0.5 on the next day.
Vishy Anand played board three (!) and was held to a draw on Saturday by Baadur Jobava. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Peter Svidler also drew their games, but Fabiano Caruana managed to win a long game against Evgeny Tomashevsky on board one.
| # | Fed | SV 1930 Hockenheim | Rtg | Fed | OSG Baden-Baden | Rtg | Result |
| 1 | Evgeny Tomashevsky | 2716 | Fabiano Caruana | 2823 | 0-1 | ||
| 2 | Nikita Vitiugov | 2726 | Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | 2804 | 1/2 | ||
| 3 | Baadur Jobava | 2702 | Viswanathan Anand | 2779 | 1/2 | ||
| 4 | David W L Howell | 2644 | Peter Svidler | 2753 | 1/2 | ||
| 5 | Rainer Buhmann | 2626 | Radoslav Wojtaszek | 2749 | 1/2 | ||
| 6 | Ivan Saric | 2652 | Rustam Kasimdzhanov | 2691 | 1/2 | ||
| 7 | Alexander Moiseenko | 2657 | Etienne Bacrot | 2689 | 1/2 | ||
| 8 | David Baramidze | 2603 | Arkadij Naiditsch | 2687 | 0-1 |
That's the number two, four and eight in the world playing for Baden-Baden! Here's a video celebrating what must have been one of the strongest line-ups ever in a club match.
The other win was scored by Arkadij Naiditsch, not a bad player either for a board eight.
As said, the match with Griesheim on Sunday was a walk-over. The only player who didn't win his game was Caruana—He was held to a draw by Swiss IM Nico Georgiadis.
That was good news for Magnus Carlsen, who had lost 13 Elo points by splitting 6-6 in the classical games with Sergey Karjakin.
On Saturday night, Carlsen's lead over world number-two Caruana was as low as 13.4 points in the live ratings, but because Caruana lost 3.9 points with that draw on Sunday, it's now 17.3.
But if Caruana does really well during the London Chess Classic (perhaps by "doing a Caruana"?), he could become the world number-one before the end of the year.
Caruana, not too far behind Carlsen anymore.
Here's Anand's smooth win on Sunday:
Schachbundesliga 2016-2017 | Round 6 Standings
| Rk | Team | # | + | - | = | MP | BP |
| 1 | OSG Baden-Baden | 6 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 36.5 |
| 2 | SG Solingen | 6 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 34.5 |
| 3 | SV 1930 Hockenheim | 6 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 10 | 30 |
| 4 | SV Muelheim Nord | 6 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 10 | 28 |
| 5 | SK Schwaebisch Hall | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 9 | 28.5 |
| 6 | Hamburger SK | 6 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 6 | 25 |
| 7 | USV TU Dresden | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 25 |
| 8 | SV Werder Bremen | 6 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 6 | 24.5 |
| 9 | SF Berlin 1903 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 25 |
| 10 | SG Trier | 6 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 22.5 |
| 11 | DJK Aufwaerts Aachen | 6 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 21.5 |
| 12 | SG Speyer-Schwegenheim | 6 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 19 |
| 13 | FC Bayern Muenchen | 6 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 18 |
| 14 | SV Griesheim 1976 | 6 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 16 |
| 15 | SK Koenig Tegel | 6 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 15.5 |
| 16 | MSA Zugzwang 82 | 6 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 14.5 |
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
Peter's first book The Chess Revolution is out now!
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