It does not happen very often, but some top-level chess games still end in a situation patzers like me face everyday: checkmate (or close to it when the losing side resigns just before the actual mate like in this example). In Monday's world championship game between Levon Aronian (White) and Alexander Grischuk, the latter was a bit too fast with pushing his nice passer to the 7th rank. The diagram shows the position after 39. ... d2. Do you see the winning combination for White? ICC has a free video of this game with comments by GM Larry Christiansen.

In sharp contrast to this game, yesterday's 11th round saw a quick draw after only 13 moves between Alexander Grischuk and the current world champion, Vladimir Kramnik. While I can understand that offering draws is OK according to the rules of chess and might be even just the professional thing to do in many situations, I am also wondering if chess would not be more interesting if players would be forced to battle it out. See here for more on this.

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