This is clearly not the way Viswanathan Anand hoped to start his second world championship match against Magnus Carlsen. The position he reached from the opening, a "Closed" Berlin (4.d3) was reasonable enough, objectively speaking, but Carlsen found a nice plan to whip up a dangerous kingside initiative - 14.Ra3 was the clear signal, but the previous moves had prepared the plan. Anand defended well for a while, but 20...Bxf5 rather than the tactically clever 20...Kh8 (21.Rxf6 Qf7) was a big concession. Soon the players reached their second straight heavy piece ending, but this time Carlsen entered it with a large positional advantage. Carlsen's technique was not up to its usual incredibly high standard, but he was still in control when Anand played 34...h5??, which lost on the spot. Carlsen played 35.Qb7 and Anand resigned on the move.
Anand's propensity to make concessions like 20...Bxf5 was part of what ruined his chances last year, and it looks like it's happening again. The trouble is that his keep-it-simple approach, one he has used to the point of cynicism over the years, has worked very effectively against everyone else in the chess world, at least since Garry Kasparov's retirement. Against Carlsen (as against Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov in their primes) it is a disaster. He accepts the concession, then ramps up the tension again until the opponent makes another concession, which he again accepts and starts the process all over again. Most players, even great ones, tend to relax at least a little once they've extracted some gain from their opponents; most, but not Carlsen. Anand must try not to let Carlsen get risk-free positions, where he is simply the best player in the world, and by a significant margin.
For Anand to choose the Berlin against Carlsen is almost the exact inversion of Kasparov's problem in 2000 against Vladimir Kramnik. Kasparov kept banging his head against the Berlin ending, believing (with some justification, at least at the time) that White simply must be better there and thus sticking to the principled belief that he should keep at it. Had he switched to the less principled 4.d3, he might not have obtained any advantage but would have reached positions where his own natural gifts would be more likely to shine. For Anand, it's the opposite: he is playing the Berlin because he believes (with justification) that Black is doing fine there. That's true (or at least seems to be true at this point in time), but he is thereby heading into the kinds of positions where his opponent's gifts for chess are more likely to shine than his own. Giving Carlsen a position where he can just grind away with no risk at all is a ridiculously bad strategy. It's not that Carlsen can't play in sharper positions - of course he can - but there they can fight on a much more equal footing. So: if Anand has some Sicilian lines ready to go in his preparation, it's time to use them. Make Carlsen take strategic risks!
The game, with some light annotations, can be replayed here. (Subscribers' coverage is coming later today. For non-subscribers, it's not too late to sign up!)