What an adventure, that third game!
In the evening, we gathered to try to analyze what had happened. What struck me most about the third game was Anikeev's time management: some moves, like 2-7 and 18-23x23, he played very quickly, even though with Black you are still diving into quite an adventure! Maybe he doesn’t calculate very concretely, but mostly follows his intuition, simply thinking, "I haven't made any crazy moves yet, so I can't be in a bad position here"?
I also noticed that at one point (the moment of 30...11-16), he played incredibly fast, even though you can’t really play that move without calculating a whole web of complications; but after my countermove, he took a very long time to think, even though by that point he had practically no real choice left. Did he calculate correctly? Or had he made a mistake and was lucky that the position was still balanced? These were all questions running through my mind.
But anyway, it was an exciting game — even though he avoided some of the tensions in the opening. Maybe he was a bit shaken by my preparation in the first game and decided to just skip the opening in the remaining games and start playing only afterwards? Something like Alexander Shvartsman did against Roel Boomstra? That’s possible. In any case, it seems like he's completely ignoring his own chances in the match.
To prepare for the fourth game, we decided to look again at the opening of the second game. First, to give him the chance to play 14.35-30! this time, now that he and his team had had time to review that option. I wasn’t particularly worried about this — in fact, I welcomed the idea.
Secondly, because I thought there must be a way to gain an advantage with Black after 14.33-28. During our team meeting, Alexander Baliakin mentioned a game he had played with Black against Alexander Shvartsman from the same opening. In that game, he got a very nice position, exactly the kind of position I hoped to achieve from this opening.
I have good technique, after all — who’s to say that Anikeev, with a somewhat passive position and no real perspective, couldn’t end up getting into trouble? The match is long; it was only my second of six games with Black, and I really wanted to try it again.
It was also possible that after the second game, he wouldn’t want to play the same opening again because it hadn’t fully convinced him. In that case, he would either need to choose a completely different first move (which we of course were also prepared for) or abandon his usual approach after 1.32-28 17-22x21, an approach he has faithfully followed for years.