Someone Likes The Match!
Lest you think everyone finds the ongoing world championship match dispiriting, have a look at this Tweet:
Anand-Gelfand g 12 was brilliant.Anand found a great pawn sac at home,and Gelfand answered with 2 pawn sacs! Wow,can't wait till tiebreaks!
Take that, haters! - that's from world #2 Levon Aronian! On the other hand, I reported on world #3 Vladimir Kramnik's utter disbelief about the finish of game 12, which, among other things, he found shocking and "a complete present" for Gelfand. (You can find other, more moderate comments by Kramnik on the match as a whole in this interview.)
So who's right? They both are. The openings and early middlegames have been interesting, with plenty of new ideas. Both players have managed to put fairly popular variations out of business, and have also done a very good of neutralizing the other's opening innovations. The problem has been that once they've done that, they call it a day rather than seeing where subsequent play will take them.
Tomorrow, they will have to play.
Reader Comments (8)
See also the response by Anish Giri (currently #54 but higher up in the recent past with chances for a comeback) to Aronian:
"Finally someone saying something positive about this short, but truly remarkable game! :) "
As to Kramnik, there's context to his quote: He was relatively clueless about the entire game (not that I criticize or blame him!). First he didn't understand Gelfand's 10.-c4 [which in hindsight might deserve !?, ! or even !!]. Then he thought that black was (at least "practically") better, that Anand should aim for a draw but Gelfand might reject a draw offer. He called 20.-a5!? first sort of a winning attempt, and a bit later an inaccuracy because 20.-Rhc8 would have forced a draw.
If the game was a similar rollercoaster for Anand and Gelfand and if they shared Kramnik's impressions (they wouldn't say so in the press conference!), Anand's draw offer might make psychological sense - maybe he just didn't realize that the worst was over for him and he could now play on without risk. This in turn assumes that Kramnik's final assessment is correct, Shipov seems to disagree ... . Sofia rules would have avoided an abrupt end of the game, but under the circumstances players have the right to offer and accept a draw - after all, it's their prestige and money which is at stake.
I may have missed something, but to my knowledge only one (former) world-top player was very critical of the entire match, and Kasparov had said so before it even started.
This match is reminding me of how distances races have progressed over the past century. As technique improved and the gaps at the top in endurance closed, eventually such races as the 5K and 10K and even sometimes the half marathon and marathon have become "tactical", in that many do not want to make a committal aggressive move until the final sprint. Clearly, Anand has decided to save energy for the final sprint to win this match. Will all world championship matches from now on depend on the final sprint rather than front running?
[DM: This looks like a graph "based" on one data point. In the last match (Anand-Topalov) three of the first four games were decisive, in the match before (Anand-Kramnik) that it was three of the first six, while Kramnik won the first two games against Topalov. I don't think that either advances in technique or computational power over the past two years are to blame, especially when alternative evidence is at hand. (Two middle-aged guys in mediocre physical condition with classical styles and a tendency to risk-averse, Black-to-draw approaches are unlikely to push hard and fight each game to the finish like a Carlsen, Aronian or Topalov.)]
I also like Hikaru Nakamura's tweet: "I must be a very bad chess player since I keep liking Anand's positions and he keeps offering draws instead of trying to win."
My model currently gives "Intrinsic Performance Ratings" for the twelve regulation games of 3002 to Anand, 2920 to Gelfand, 2962 combined. I suspect much of the excess over 2800 owes to their home-prep computers, exaggerated by the relative shortness of the games.
My own verdict on "who's right" is supplied by the fact that while the Multi-PV analysis needed for my model averages 6-8 hours per game, the last two games of the match took a mere 4.5 hours together.
My personal guess is that the "this match is dull" stuff is coming from 1) the players choice to the end games perhaps slightly prematurely and 2) the fact that is the first WCC match where we have both a huge amount of mobile devices that have powerful chess software. Point 2 is particularly important because that means every amateur is able to go to his device see an '=' and decry the players immediately as 'not trying' and 'dull.'
As for being the champion being the best memorizer, it's part of the story but not even close to the whole thing. In this match, for instance, we've already seen big novelties on moves 5 and 6!
I'm quoting Dennis from a previous thread above. Not only have we had important novelties early, we've also seen the other player rise to the challenge AT THE BOARD and find adequate responses, or maybe even more in Game 12.
Game 12 had lots of content, and was very interesting. But it did seem to end too early, especially considering how Gelfand pressed in game 9. We'll see in coming days as the analysts work it out. I saw Mark Crowther's line for the final position and thought, "Yeah, that looks more like a draw." Then I saw Shipov's line and thought, "What a mess!" I wasn't convinced by Shipov's line, though, as I don't see Anand playing b4 at the point Shipov suggested, precisely because of the ...a3 response.
Still, we'll know more about that final position soon enough.
I also like (and very much agree with) what Aronian said in regard to Kasparov's comment about the match not being a contest for the title of the world's strongest player:
IPR's for the Rapid playoff: Anand 2701, Gelfand 2720, combined 2710. Error bars are wide enough that this much closeness is coincidence.
An interesting feature of the match that no one I've seen has noted: Anand had the "disadvantage" of N v. B in 9 of the 12 classical games! Very often, Gelfand had the two bishops. (Interestingly, neither of the decisive games, Games 7 and 8, featured this imbalance.)
I guess Kramnik is right that Anand really understands knights!