2012 World Championship, Game 5: Another Short, Dull Draw
The game began promisingly with a couple of opening surprises. The champion, Viswanathan Anand, pulled his traditional favorite move 1.e4 out of his trusty (or is it rusty) arsenal, prepared to do battle against the Petroff or the Najdorf. Instead, Boris Gelfand offered the second surprise of the match, employing the Sveshnikov Sicilian. When all goes well for Black in that opening, the result is very frequently a position where White has very good control over the light squares, Black enjoys a similar grip on the dark squares, and there's absolutely nothing either player can do to the other.
And that's what happened. Anand didn't put Gelfand's opening to much of a test, and after 27 moves and less than 100 minutes, the players called it a day. To be fair, there wasn't much left to be extracted from the position; that was done by previous decisions. In particular, Anand's 22.Bh3 allowed Gelfand full and easy equality; 22.Qc4 was the most testing try.
The match remains tied at 2.5-2.5, and Gelfand will have two consecutive chances to make something happen with the white pieces. Let's hope that whether he succeeds or not, the players at least push each other to play a full game!
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Reader Comments (2)
I can think of several reasons why the match has progressed in this fashion so far: First, as far as I can tell anyway, neither of these players is bringing a revolutionary approach to chess in this match. In matches of the past, the World Champion tended to be someone who furthered chess a little more based on their style of play, though perhaps not so much in recent championships. The championship today is more about who can most perfectly execute the guidelines of play that have been established over time.
[DM: Hmm, I can think of relatively few matches featuring "revolutionary" approaches. Lasker, Capa, Euwe, Smyslov, Spassky, Karpov, Kramnik and Anand are mostly classical players. Even other champions like Petrosian and Kasparov, while stylistically unusual in their times, had forebears (e.g. Nimzowitsch and Alekhine.)]
The second observation is that as computers become stronger (and seconds work harder) opening preparation is probably the best it will be. As computers have not been able to solve chess yet, it is not surprising that the fruit of these preparations are slight advantages for one side. The only chance there is in the match for either side is to catch the opponent in some line they had not prepared for, but to do so could mean an early deviation, which could entail some risk. I assume that Gelfand and Anand have lines prepared with higher probability of victory, but in a match situation, it makes more sense to save those for the end, and to test the opponent in relatively less risky lines.
[DM: But what about the 2008 and 2010 matches? - computers were great then, too. And what about Aronian's and Carlsen's ability to defeat their peers on a fairly regular basis, even without a serious (or sometimes any) headstart out of the opening? And anyway, there's nothing wrong with slight advantages. Many great players in chess history have specialized in winning with them - notably Karpov during his reign and Carlsen today. The thing is, though, it's hard to convert a slight advantage into a win when you've already offered your opponent a draw.]
Finally, this is the first championship in a while where there is no animosity amongst the competitors. In all the previous championships, both players had something to prove. Whether it was a fierce rivalry, or the challenger trying to win their first title, both players had strong motivation to prove themselves. This match is somewhat one-sided in that only Gelfand has something to prove, while Anand is merely defending a title he has held for 5 years. Thus, the requisite juices from both sides aren't there to create the fireworks.
[DM: There was no animosity between Kramnik and Leko, who even had the same manager, very little animosity between Kramnik and Anand, and none at the time between Kramnik and Kasparov. It's not primarily animosity that makes matches, it's styles. Maybe the sorts of players who tend to hate their opponents simultaneously tend to be more aggressive in their chess as well, so there could be some sort of correlation, but it's not the animosity per se that's doing the work.]
2 points:
1. I can't help but wonder if a larger win/loss prize dollar differential would help matters. In this match, even the loser, regardless of how he plays, walks away with 1 million dollars. Perhaps if the 2.5 million prize fund were split with only $250,000 going to the loser, the games would have more fight in them.
2. Short "agreed upon" draws are never good for the chess spectators--especially the majority of us who are not Grandmasters. If the game is truly a draw then I'd like to see the players spend 30 seconds per move playing it out to the end. Show us the draw!
Thanks,
Chris Kantack
[DM: I wonder if small electric shocks might help.]