The first ever Fischer Random Chess showdown turned into a rousing success as Peter Leko and Michael Adams played the last two games in spectacular fashion. After being held to a draw in the seventh game, Adams’ only chance left to draw the whole match and force a tie-break was by winning the eighth and final game with the black pieces. As expected, Adams did go for an all out victory. After getting a Sicilian-like initiative on the queenside it appeared like he had all he needed to win. And he came so tantalizingly close to pulling it off! But with a miracle defence, Leko, who was once referred by Michael Greengard as “the boy who can defend the Alamo with a butter knife,” somehow managed to hang-on. Leko found a resourceful way to break though Adams’ king and force a perpetual check to win the match by the narrowest margin, 4.5-3.5!
It was a fitting-end indeed for Fischer’s padawan to be the one to figure his way around the intricacies of Fishcer Random Chess more accurately than his opponent. Leko can now be proud to be called as the first world champion of this fascinating variation of chess.
Never mind if there are no qualification tournaments or candidates matches yet for Fischer Random. The first official world championship of chess in 1886 didn't have one either. Prior to that, there was more than a century of challenge matches that produced the likes of Anderssen and Morphy who are likewise considered as world champions both by chess historians and common chess enthusiasts. But we don't really have to dig far back to history. Just last year, Kramnik took the title from Garry Kasparov without passing through any qualification tournaments or matches at all.
Peter Leko and Michael Adams were chosen as the most logical choices to play for the first Fischer Random title. Both players are in the top five in the January 2001 world rankings joining former and current world champions Kasparov, Anand and Kramnik. Today, nobody injects more new super novelties to the known theories more than Peter Leko. Leko has actually played some Fischer Random games with the inventor of the game himself, Bobby Fischer, who as everyone knows happens to be his friend although he says he prefers to keep the memories to himself.
On the other hand Adams, the world no.1 in blitz or rapid chess is regarded as the strongest player in unfamiliar positions because he often relies on unorthodox variations. This pragmatic player often copes better with unusual positions than his rivals. Kasparov Chess Online who called Adams the famous improviser of the board, actually favored him to win the match. Leko himself thought Adams was the perfect player for Fischer Random but Adams insisted Leko is favorite because of his experience with the game.
Meanwhile, the other highlight of the Chess Classic Mainz was the blitz match between FIDE champion Viswanathan Anand and Braingames champion Vladimir Kramnik. The blitz games were played using the traditional or classic starting position which, after watching the Leko-Adams match, now started to look pale and lacking in excitement compared to Fischer Random. The match ended at 5 all with only 1 victory each for both players. Anand however, went on to win in the tie-breaks.
Adams and Leko later celebrated a successful final day at the Chess Classic Mainz. Both Grandmasters each played two classic chess games in blitz against a computer program called Pocket Fritz and they routed the computer by a combined score of 3.5-0.5. Adams, venting his disappointment to the computer, showed no mercy and crushed the computer 2-0 while Leko conceded one draw with black but defeated it with white in only 21 moves.
Garry Kasparov, in a recent one-on-one interview in BBC’s Hard Talk, confidently declared that at least in the next 30 years, the world chess champion, at his best, will still be able to beat the computer. He further disclosed that his loss to IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997 had human intervention. IBM destroyed the evidence by destroying Deep Blue along with all its print out analysis. Bobby Fischer, on the other hand stated before that without access to databases containing the millions of opening variations in traditional chess, computers do not really play chess all that well and this is one of the reasons why he invented Fischer Random Chess.