Game 6: Prediction Time
Saturday, May 1, 2010 at 12:42AM
Dennis Monokroussos in Anand-Topalov 2010

Game 6 is in the morning, and we'll continue our burgeoning tradition of trying to guess the opening of the next game.

So: World champion Viswanathan Anand leads by a point, and has nothing to complain about with his White results - he won both games. Both were Catalans, but while it doesn't seem that he obtained any advantage in the opening of the first, Veselin Topalov either disliked the sort of position he got, felt that Anand had an improvement waiting in that same line, or simply felt that the line he switched to in their second Catalan game (game 4 of the match) would be more effective. In fact it was less effective, and he was badly outplayed.

Will Topalov switch openings this time? He hasn't really obtained "his" kind of position, but on the other hand it's too early in the match and the score is too close to switch to something as strategically risky as the Modern Benoni unless he feels very comfortable with his preparation there. So I predict that he'll allow another Catalan, but I don't believe he'll repeat the variation from the last game.

But what do you think?

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