Day two – Of Elephants and Men

Spain is weird. One day there is a strike and the entire country is shut down. The next day everyone is on the street, noisly celebrating a some fiesta or the other. But one must admit, they do excel at the latter. I mean when's the last time you saw elephants take part in your local street festival?

The fiesta procession with giant figures and lots and lots of brass music

Circus floats are part of the festivities

And elephants, with leggy female mahoots

...as you can see here

Who's going to win the Advanced Chess match, people asked.
I swear this elephant replied "Aahnaand"!

A group of fiesta street performers

"We'll look after the software ourselves, you go out and get more pictures," Vlady Kramnik told me when I showed him these at dinner.

Did I mention that everyone was on the streets of León?

This fiesta went on until the wee hours of the morning. With loud bands and singers, bent on keeping the entire town awake. Our hotel was about half a mile from the centre of the action, and at three a.m. you still couldn't get a wink of sleep (if you didn't have shut-the-world-out ear plugs with you). It will be interesting to see how the chess players survived.

Day two breaks

It started for most with an 8:30 appointment with doom: Spain was held 0:0 by South Korea in regular time in the soccer world cup. That, for the uninitiated, is like Russia drawing the British Virgin Islands at the Chess Olympiade.

But it got worse. The two teams didn't score in the extension (equivalent to blitz tie-break games) and in the penalty shootout it was the Koreans who got the extra goal to proceed to the semifinals.

There is a somber hush over the entire city, the starkest imaginable contrast to last night. Little clusters of men on the streets, discussing what went wrong and which heads must roll. It will be interesting to see the mood of the public at this afternoons chess games.

Game three

Adjusting pieces before the first game + video of the opening phase.

A shock for Anand, who is so used to winning in Advanced Chess. But this year it is Kramnik who went into the lead, with a nice effort in his second white game. His 20th move had Vishy visibly disconcerted and shaking his head. He resigned shortly before six p.m.

Let me think, what do I play here?

The games and the computer displays are projected for the public on giant screens in the playing hall (and all over the site).

Naturally the players cannot see these screens but the audience can see everything.

On the screen above you can see the game from Anand's point of view. On the left is his analysis board with Junior and Fritz running, on the right the official game board and the analysis of the commentators, which the audience can listen to via infrared receivers. And in the middle on the right Anand's opponent, captured by one of the two player cameras on the stage.

Game four

This was an interesting game in which many observers believed that Vishy Anand had committed an inexplicable suicide. He followed a game Van Wely-Short, Wijk aan Zee 1997, all the way up to move 30, which Black had won. But Vishy appeared to be pressing, right to the end, where Black had to check carefully with the computer in order to hold the queen ending. At move 48 a draw was agreed.

"Why did you repeat this game without need and go into a lost ending?" IM Ricardo Calvo asked him in the press conference after the games. Vishy's reply: "It was not without need and it 's not lost".

When Calvo sought backing from Kramnik he got essentially the same reply: in spite of the result of Van Wely-Short it was White who had the winning chances.

• Games three and four with commentary (in Spanish)

Frederic Friedel

Schedule

• Official web site
• Previous Advanced Chess event (2002)