Anand v Gelfand

[Paul Cooksey]

World #Chess Ch Rapid TB: Gelfand-Anand Gm3: Perfect example of position vs clock. Anand got a bad position but used no time doing so.

[Eoin Devane]

Draw.

[Jonathan Rogers]

what's the best way to watch, without ahving to download/sign up to anything? Chessbomb seems to have crashed, unsurprisingly

[Paul Cooksey]

official site http://moscow2012.fide.com/en unless you are at work and going to get in trouble for streaming video over the network. If you are, maybe TWIC

[Paul Cooksey]

So Vishy has sucked almost all the life out of the position, at the expense of having to defend bn vs bb. But then Anand has not been scared by the bishop pair throughout the match

[Christopher Kreuzer]

If Gelfand fails to break through here, where does he end up in the next WCC cycle? Does a losing challenger get some place in the next cycle or not? This is the last of the first four games, right, and if Anand draws he retains his title?

[Giulio Simeone]

I'm beginning to wonder if this is the future of over-the-board chess; games with something like 25 + 10' on the clocks, rather than the seven-hour stuff.

It may well happen, in 20 or 30 years, that chess will completely submit to broadcasting requirements, and that the most important international tournaments, as well as the world championship, will be blitz tournaments ... but let me hope I won't happen. I believe we are a little better than soccer's supporters, that just sit on the couch and do nothing, we like also to think and get ourselves involved in the game. Nowadays, I believe that the majority of the players are more interested to play themselves than to just sit down and watch. A good thing with chess is that, differently from other sports, it can be played also by the middle and old aged.

Blitz games maybe a bit more interesting to watch live, but surely are less interesting to play and also less interesting to study. In a blitz game you are much less likely to see beautiful combinations, as well as fine endgame tecnique. Since there are still more chess players than chess watchers, and I believe it will be so also in the future, I hope blitz chess won't overrule slow chess.

[Eoin Devane]

This is the last of the first four games, right, and if Anand draws he retains his title?

Correct.

[David Sedgwick]

If Gelfand fails to break through here, where does he end up in the next WCC cycle? Does a losing challenger get some place in the next cycle or not?

The loser gets a place in the 8 player Candidates Tournament scheduled to be held in London in March 2013.

[Alex Holowczak]

It may well happen, in 20 or 30 years, that chess will completely submit to broadcasting requirements, and that the most important international tournaments, as well as the world championship, will be blitz tournaments ... but let me hope I won't happen. I believe we are a little better than soccer's supporters, that just sit on the couch and do nothing, we like also to think and get ourselves involved in the game. Nowadays, I believe that the majority of the players are more interested to play themselves than to just sit down and watch. A good thing with chess is that, differently from other sports, it can be played also by the middle and old aged.

I'm not proposing blitz; I'm proposing what we now call rapidplay. Long enough to sit down and watch for an hour, but short enough not to bore you. I can imagine a typical 10-player APA event which instead of having 5 7-hour games going on, has 5 rapidplay games, held one after the other, with live commentary. Anyone turning up to watch can focus their attention on different players over the course of the afternoon, and commit their full attention to the only game in progress.

Blitz games maybe a bit more interesting to watch live, but surely are less interesting to play and also less interesting to study. In a blitz game you are much less likely to see beautiful combinations, as well as fine endgame tecnique. Since there are still more chess players than chess watchers, and I believe it will be so also in the future, I hope blitz chess won't overrule slow chess.

If I want to see what happens in a 7-hour game of chess, then I'll probably play through the PGN afterwards. I won't watch it live. If I'm playing through the game afterwards, then it may as well be a correspondence game.

The commentary of this match has sometimes switched to some art gallery because there's nothing going on at the chess. At least, in a 7-hour day of Test cricket (including the hour for lunch and tea combined), there are 540 discrete moments of interest during the day. With a 7-hour chess game, there might be 100 on average. (A fifty-move game, which is probably a bit generous.)

This isn't to say Rapidplay is the best way to determine a World Champion. The idea of the World Championship is to find the best player in the world, rather than entertain, I guess. But it'd certainly liven up the myriad of closed super-GM invitational events if a few of them were Rapidplay.

[Paul Cooksey]

Anand holds 2.5-1.5 winner and still...

[Geoff Chandler]

I've just got up...What time does it start?

[Eoin Devane]

Congratulations to Vishy Anand!

[Christopher Kreuzer]

He's defended his title a few times now. What is the record for number of successful title defences in classical WCC?

[Ian Kingston]

He's defended his title a few times now. What is the record for number of successful title defences in classical WCC?

Six: Emanuel Lasker. Wikipedia has a table (already updated): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_ches ... _victories