World Chess Championships - Magnus Carlsen Wins!

cdeb

That'd probably be advantage Carlsen straight away, as Carlsen has played the King's Gambit before (three times) and Anand hasn't.

Not a huge advantage, but it can hardly help, I'd say.

checknraise

Whatever about a Kings Gambit a Scotch or Italian will give Anand a playable position with more chances then what he is going into at the moment.

The bid problem is the only time I ever see Carlsen losing is when he pushes too hard and he has no need to as things stand.

Hercule

at this rate the only person who is going to beat carlsen is carlsen

TOMP

Both players had to give samples for doping control today directly after the match.

Wondering if players had a five/six hour match and they took a few cans of red bull to keep alert, would they fail doping?

Sparks

TOMP wrote: »

Both players had to give samples for doping control today directly after the match.
Wondering if players had a five/six hour match and they took a few cans of red bull to keep alert, would they fail doping?

Not any more, caffeine was taken off the WADA list a few years ago (but back then, you could easily fail the test if you had too many espressos) and the taurine's not on the 2014 list at all. But the thing is, if it was, that's just part of the game. You just watch what you take carefully when getting tested is part of the sport.

Ciaran

Nigel Short:

If the players fail the doping controls it is because they were on tranquilisers #AnandCarlsen

Sparks

Carlsen wins game 9, it's now 6:3 with only three slow games left. Unless Anand really digs deep tomorrow, this'll be all over before the weekend...

cdeb

So after a slow start, it went pretty much as expected really. Carlsen's 100 point rating gap has translated into a 67% score. It's tempting to dismiss this as a mis-match, but I think it has to be acknowledged just what a phenomenal player Carlsen is.

Though the last game looks like the most interesting of the lot; a huge blunder by Anand at the death, missing a line when - the odd queen in three down - his mating threats were forcing Carlsen to give the queen back.

Sparks

And that's it, effectively. Today's draw leaves the score 6.5-3.5 to Carlsen with two games remaining, so he's the new World Champion.

Sparks

From Chess.com:

BREAKING: Magnus Carlsen 16th Undisputed World Champion of Chess



Magnus Carlsen won the 2013 World Chess Championship just moments ago in Chennai, India to become the 16th Undisputed World Champion of Chess. The 10th and last game of the match ended in a draw, and so the final score is 6.5-3.5 in favour of the Norwegian, who will celebrate his 23rd birthday in eight days from now. (More later.)

Sparks

Interesting article in the Guardian about the championships, written after game four...

The world's greatest game – so why have we fallen out of love with chess?
The world championship between Vishy Anand and Magnus Carlsen is finely poised, but sadly chess is still ignored

...

The sadness is that the mainstream media in the UK aren't following the games very closely. I'm old enough to remember not just the great match in Reykjavik between the crazed American Bobby Fischer and the suave Russian Boris Spassky in 1972, which was headline news for months, but the matches between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi in 1978 and 1981, which used to get decent-sized daily news reports. Now, apart from occasional short items by underused chess correspondents, there is nothing in the UK press.

Despite there being 20,000 committed club chess players in the UK, several hundred thousand casual players and a strong chess presence in schools, especially at primary level, this great event is being seriously under-reported. What coverage there has been is of Carlsen, who is portrayed as a kind of geeky Matt Damon. There is no attempt to get to grips with the actual chess.

The game has slipped off the mainstream media agenda in the UK. In India and Norway, there is of course huge excitement about the match – Norwegian news websites crashed when, in a tournament in London in March, Carlsen qualified to play for the world championship, and they were buzzing on Wednesday when it seemed their hero was getting on top.

...continues

cdeb

Similar can be said for a lot of games, I think. Snooker, for example - massive in the 80s, but struggling now with few enough new players coming through onto the tour. (If you want a trip back in time, try reading 32-62 in the world rankings)

I think in part, marketing has gotten to the stage where some sports (the Premiership being the obvious example) are so popular they drown everything else out, and people latch onto them, often for reasons of self-esteem. We're so blinded by all that, and by fitting in with everyone, that we're almost scared to try something different.

Sparks

Interesting interview with Anand on ChessVibes. Nice to see players at that level being level-headed and having a degree of humility.