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World chess championship: is it getting duller?
08 May 2010
The match is being held in Bulgaria - Topalov's home country - which is in itself highly suspect. Shouldn't it be in a neutral country? The match organizers seem rather biased.
As a prime example of their bias, Anand was stranded in Frankfurt when all air travel was disrupted by the volcanic ash emissions from Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland. Anand asked for a three day postponement so he could get to the match. But the Bulgarian organizers - showing a remarkably Soviet-style stubbornness - refused. Anand had to reach Sofia by road and arrived on April 20, after an exhausting 40-hour road journey. That alone would not endear either Topalov or the Bulgarian organizers to chess players.
According to Wikipedia, Anand has played Topalov 67 times previously, winning 17, drawing 37 and losing 13. But in this match, Anand seems dis-spirited, and off his form.
As of May 8, the 13-game match was tied 5-5 points, with three games left to play (two if either player can win both). Anand's performance has been, at bast, lackluster, and some of his losses have been the result of his own sloppiness, rather than Topalov's brilliance.
Perhaps my relative disinterest in the match comes from the style of play: Grunfeld, Catalan, Slav, Indian and Nimzo-Indian. Very modern, even hyper-modern in the Nimzo-Indian. A far cry from the prosaic Ruy Lopez and Sicilian games I play. Of course, my games are usually accompanied by a glass of wine or beer...
It may also come from having the games analyzed to the nth degree by every chess program available. Chess almost becomes too mechanical this way. I love playing against Fritz and other chess programs, in great part because I don't have many opportunities to play chess with others (that may change when Tim denBok gets his adult chess club organized at the the Collingwood Library). But I also like chess as a social activity, not merely an intellectual one. Most chess championships these days take the game into the intellectual stratosphere, but they seem soul-less. Nothing at all like the passionate and endlessly entertaining match between Fischer and Spassky! Let alone the games of Lasker, Morphy, Steinitz, Capablanca, Euwe...
The game analyses are sometimes interesting, as in this description of game 9:
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Game 9 was a traumatic error strewn game in which Anand missed a number of winning chances and Topalov having got right back into the game, played rapidly to find himself lost again before nervousness and time pressure caused Anand to throw the win away for a final time.
The game opened Topalov defending a Nimzo-Indian instead of a Catalan and he soon found himself on the back foot after yet another novelty from Anand. Topalov took a very committal decision to sacrifice two rooks for a queen which seemed to be a bad one.
Then on move 40 with only a few minutes left Anand decided to take a check to make time control but this allowed Topalov to escape with his king to the queenside and support his passed pawns. This position was hard to assess. Topalov then played the committal 42...b4 in only 5 minutes (55 minutes left), his 44...Qa1+ was definitely wrong (the queen is more active on c1) and the losing 46...gxh5. Anand played slowly and found a way to win Topalov's knight but again he was under time-pressure coming up to the second time control and only when he just made it could he settle down to find the win.
The game opened Topalov defending a Nimzo-Indian instead of a Catalan and he soon found himself on the back foot after yet another novelty from Anand. Topalov took a very committal decision to sacrifice two rooks for a queen which seemed to be a bad one.
Then on move 40 with only a few minutes left Anand decided to take a check to make time control but this allowed Topalov to escape with his king to the queenside and support his passed pawns. This position was hard to assess. Topalov then played the committal 42...b4 in only 5 minutes (55 minutes left), his 44...Qa1+ was definitely wrong (the queen is more active on c1) and the losing 46...gxh5. Anand played slowly and found a way to win Topalov's knight but again he was under time-pressure coming up to the second time control and only when he just made it could he settle down to find the win.
and this one of the same game:
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A complete horror of a game left the scores level at the world championships as defending champion Vishy Anand missed several opportunities to win his ninth battle with Veselin Topalov at Sofia. If Anand surrenders his title he will rue these missed opportunities. Topalov has two games with the white pieces in the three that remain and Anand must improve on his last game with black which saw him emerge from the opening with a difficult position.
Topalov was outplayed but escaped before the time control at move 40. In the next twenty moves Topalov played very quickly and as the next time control approached at move 60 he was completely lost before Anand threw away win after win in a fog of time pressure and nerves. At the post game press conference Topalov appeared weary but Anand looked shattered. Both are doubtless exhausted but Topalov must be buoyed by the great escape.
Anand played white and abandoned the Catalan which had brought him two victories. Topalov defended with the first Nimzo-Indian Defence of the match but was soon outplayed. The Bulgarian gave up two rooks for a queen but must have overlooked a clever intermezzo that undermined his defensive edifice and led to tactical complications that favoured the champion.
Topalov was outplayed but escaped before the time control at move 40. In the next twenty moves Topalov played very quickly and as the next time control approached at move 60 he was completely lost before Anand threw away win after win in a fog of time pressure and nerves. At the post game press conference Topalov appeared weary but Anand looked shattered. Both are doubtless exhausted but Topalov must be buoyed by the great escape.
Anand played white and abandoned the Catalan which had brought him two victories. Topalov defended with the first Nimzo-Indian Defence of the match but was soon outplayed. The Bulgarian gave up two rooks for a queen but must have overlooked a clever intermezzo that undermined his defensive edifice and led to tactical complications that favoured the champion.
But overall, the games and the match itself have failed to excite me, and despite some witty and pointed commentary, overall the games seem dull, at least to my rather benthic appreciation of chess. Perhaps its because the games are played at a level that's both well beyond my abilities, or perhaps it's just that chess has become so heavily analysed that it's difficult for mere mortals to appreciate it (except, perhaps, for the Cylons among us...).
Maybe it's time for the higher levels of chess organization to take up Fischer Random Chess (aka Chess 960) to get back some of the entertainment value. Back in 1925, world champion Jose Raul Capablanca felt chess had reached its limit and proposed an alternative which he strove, vainly, to get accepted. Others have suggested swapping the position of bishops and knights to enliven the game. No alternative has been given more than curiosity value, but I suspect in the near future, a chess alternative will have to get some prominence to shake off the dullness of modern championship-level chess.
Maybe because it's all fixed. Just like pro-wrestling. I remember the time Hulk Hogan laid an absolute pin against Roddy Piper, if only because Piper allowed himself to be caught by Boden's Mate. We all know Piper took the fall because he had an outside passed pawn, when the whole time he could have easily pulled off the Lucena position...