Tuesday 11 May 2010

Anand v Topalov - Final game

The final game of the 2010 Anand v Topalov World Championship match is being played at the moment, although if it ends in a draw then we will see tie-breaks at a faster time control. At the moment they have reached the 25th move and Anand has the opportunity to make a 'silent' draw offer by allowing Topalov to repeat the position.
The fact that they are going into the final game in a position where a draw may suit both players says to me that a 12 game match is far too short. I have always been a fan of the 24 game match, and none of the recent 12 game matches have changed my opinion. Apart from simply providing more chess I feel the longer matches provide a greater chance of a decisive result. At the moment neither player has to dig too deep into their opening prep, meaning a couple of solid systems is all that is required to at least split the match. Compare the narrow choice of openings in the more recent matches with the fact that Fischer v Spassky saw 8 different opening systems played over 21 games.
With 11 out of the 12 games in this match starting with d4 the only really surprising opening choice was Anand's adoption of the Grunfeld. Otherwise it was a lot of what had been seen previously, with a similar kind of predictability on the scoreboard.
Of course longer matches are unlikely to return, for financial reasons, but it would be nice to see a match where the players didn't just play for "two" results.

*As I reached the end of this post Anand made the 'silent' offer, but Topalov declined to repeat the position.

1 comment:

TrueFiendish said...

Topalov panicked and lost, a fact that will disappoint few.