Anand vs. Carlsen

bohm

Anand and Carlsen is playing the world championship right now. After 4 draws Carlsen just won game 5! (go go Carlsen!)

I am not a big chess player and have never followed chess, but having accidently seen half of match 2 I must regret to say I am hooked .

Anybody else following it?

http://chennai2013.fide.com/

Earnest

Carlsen is another Fischer but less eccentric and self-centred. Also he's not American and Anand is not Russian so it's just a game of chess after all.

bohm

Game 6 was another win for Carlsen:

http://chennai2013.fide.com/results-and-info-page/

and again Carlsen played perfectly and in a drawn position gave up his slight material advantage to get more play with his king. Anand made one suboptimal move and it spiralled out of control from there. Playing Carlsen must be like torture, he just apply preasure for hours and hours to see if you mess up.

Meanwhile, anyone else think the indian co-caster should stick a sock in Susan Polgar and cast solo? If they made a rule to cast without engines, why the fuck does she then read out tweets on how the engine evaluate the position all the time?

dropoffyourkeylee

There is another chess world championship match going on now, this time Carlsen is defending against Sergey Karjakin. You can watch for free at:

https://worldchess.com/nyc2016/

but the commentary, etc is not free.

I like Karjakin. He's kind of geeky, seems to have less confidence, talks with a bit of a stutter, at least in English. Definitely the underdog. He's leading the match right now.

I

bohm

Chess 24 commentary is very good even though they don't have pictures of the players.

Carlsen got winning positions he did not convert during the first few games, then he had a complete meltdown in the last two games and is behind; this game is not going good either.

Hindsight is 20/20 but obviously he regret he did not just play passive as Karjakin and used his advantage in the playoffs, right now Karjakin is a clear favorite to win.