Indian chess Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand has won Game 3 of the 2014 World Chess Championship after defending champion Magnus Carlsen resigned from the game at the Main Media center in Sochi on Tuesday.

India’s Viswanathan Anand pulled off a sensational victory over world chess champion Magnus Carlsen on Tuesday in the third game of the ongoing world title match at Sochi , springing back from his disappointing defeat two days ago to restore parity in the 12-game match.

From the beginning, Anand took the fight to Carlsen and seized the initiative very early in the game. His playing style on Tuesday was reminiscent of former world champion Gary Kasparov’s in a 1995 world championship match in New York.

Viswanathan Anand beat Magnus Carlsen in game three of their World Championship match to level the scores just one game after going behind. Anand played the topical 5.Bf4 Queen’s Gambit and obtained a big advantage through vastly superior opening preparation. Anand’s deep opening preparation especially in his World Championship matches has been a big part of his success. Carlsen isn’t as well prepared so it’s perhaps a bit of a surprise that this kind of loss hasn’t happened before now. Game two saw Anand outplayed from a virtually equal position which was a very bad sign for him, now it is Carlsen who has some worries, he will lose a lot of games to Anand with the quality of preparation shown today.

8.h3 can lead to very similar positions to the game and Tomashevsky vs Riazantsev , if Carlsen had seen it, should have warned him off this kind of position altogether. 11.0-0 is a more common white choice than 11.Bxa6 and the players were then following Aronian-Adams from Bilbao 2013 a game Carlsen seemed to either be worried about or not remember properly as his play slowed right down.

Anand had prepared at least until 24.Qxb6 which he knew to be favourable (and with the addition of h3 exactly the same as the Tomashevsky game). Carlsen had seen this position coming for some time but it was not part of his preparation which was far beneath what you’d expect for a world championship match.

Carlsen used lots of time indicating his unhappiness with his preparation. Carlsen said afterwards “then he got this 26.Rc6 and all, of this stuff with 27…g5 and 28….Bb4 doesn’t work at all”. 26…g5 is tricky but Anand managed to find his way through the immediate complications and his surprise at 27.Bb4. Anand spent a long time over 28.Ra1, the best move in the position and Carlsen, down to 6 minutes, blundered with 28…Ba5 although his position must be very bad anyway.

Anand didn’t even have to be all that accurate with computers suggesting 25.Qa6 and 27.Be5 being better than what Anand played. However Anand just kept his major trumps in the position and Carlsen just collapsed in what was a pretty miserable position.