Anand defended the World Championship today. It was a messy final with chances for both sides, especially Gelfand, but it’s Gelfand’s fault for not managing his time so that he could take advantage of opportunities.
Two gentlemen played chess of the highest quality in a match filled with tension, as close as it could possibly be. The internet coverage was wonderful, both the chess and the art segments, and by all accounts the viewership was high. (Most importantly I was announced as winning one of the quizzes and will receive some sort of prize, I guess.) New contributions were made to opening theory in most of the games, and all the classical games were decided on chess merits. The match revived some old systems like the Gruenfeld, so maybe I found some things interesting that youngsters did not.
I wish Gelfand could have won and had his time as champion; it’s too much to hope that at 43 he’ll win another cycle to challenge again. Of course people (though not I) were saying the same, and worse, all while he was winning the World Cup and then the Candidates’. I was also very impressed by Grischuk’s play in the Candidates’ matches, which I’ve described as (mostly) “perfect”, and he’s much younger, and then of course Carlsen might play, and Aronian might become a cluch player, and Nakamura might endure the cycle, and Nepomnyashchi might make us all correct the spelling of his name, and Wang Hao might become the little bit better that it will take … well who knows who the next challenger will be.
While I’ve been critical of the slow part of the match, the rapid games were fantastic. Anand showed incredible skill in the endgame, considering the time element. I never heard him proclaimed an endgame superstar, but he was impressive. Gelfand played great, but it seems a bit too slowly.
One commentator made a strange point, and one to think about, that I’ve never heard. He said that as time becomes short, knights gain in strength compared to bishops, that’s it’s much easier to miss knight moves. Interesting.
I pointed out that it seems like all match Gelfand had the two bishops against Anand’s N+B, or occasionally 2N’s. Interesting contrast in philosophies. Those who seem to think that the two bishops automatically equal a win (usually the people melded to their computer evals) might want to rethink that one.
The match got better as it went along. I wonder if Anand will retire. He may have to defend his title against a player half his age! Has this ever happened in championship history?
Russians typically prefer bishops, it’s true, and Anand has often been happy with knights. They each played true to their style in this match. Actually I think the bishops turned out better, and it was remarkable to me how many times Gelfand was able to prevent Anand from enjoying his knights, and I can’t think of a single game where the knights looked better than the bishops.
In game 2 today that Gelfand lost, I started watching after a few minutes had passed, about when he played Bxg2, and the position looked very scary for him; he had no way to develop and protect his king without starting to give back pawn after pawn. His problems were development and king safety, not that he had bishops. It was pretty amazing that he got his bearings and found his way to a drawn position, and it was drawn because he had made his remaining bishop very active with Bc8! Then he lost in time pressure.
In game 3 today Gelfand had a chance to come back in a winning position where among his positional advantages, his bishops were better than Anand’s knights. But he was out-calculated at one point and made a questionable decision later, and Anand escaped.
Then again in game 4, Gelfand had the bishops and the advantage because of the bishops. But it was probably never a winning advantage.
If the tiebreak today was seen as better than the classical portion of the match, I would conclude that the spectators like games where they there are mistakes that they can understand. I agree with those who say the fault is not in the players, and that if more of this sort of excitement is desired, we would need a rules change to narrow the gap between the top professionals and the rest of us. I don’t want such a rules change and am content to keep watching “boring” matches like this, and the Candidates, on the edge of my seat. Others are free to build their own competitions and sports according to rules they decide.
Botvinnik-Tal. Botvinnik was 49 when he lost to the 23 yo Tal. Given that Tal was the youngest world champion up to that time, that was a natural to check.
Karpov was 34 to Kasparov’s 22 in 1985 — so only about 2/3.
Steinitz was 58 to Lasker’s 26 in 1894.
Anderssen was 40 to Morphy’s 19 in 1858.
Those were a few that came to mine - there may be more…