I stopped watching after 27 moves, sensing the time trouble debacle. Bummer, as I was rooting for Kamsky. But I'll console myself with nailing the pre-match prediction: Topo +2 in regulation.

Kamsky's preparation, which I expected to be the vulnerable point, seemed OK. Time trouble obviously was killer, which suggests that he was simply in bad form. Interestingly, Kamsky's a very strong blitz/bullet player who constantly gets into bad time pressure at classical control. Shades of Walter Browne. (Maybe also Ivanchuk, but he's just too unpredictable.)

That's really unfair to Topalov. He beat Kamsky 3 times in a 7-game match and had a performance rating of 2827. I don't know what else he could have done.

And if Kamsky needs to take forever to find a good strategy starting at move 4 (see game 2), that's his chess skill and knowledge too, not just time.

I am not trying to detract from Topalov at all, on the contrary, I was hoping he would win. I just think that sans the time trouble, Kamsky would have made it incredibly more difficult for Topalov, and the score would be much closer. Topalov can thank both his own skill and Kamsky's clock for this victory, in pretty equally portions. You make a good point though ... in a tournament or match, it is not just the quality of your play that matters, but how well you handle the entire situation (clock, noises, opponent's sunglasses, etc)

Besides, after taking 30 minutes today, Kamsky played Ba4?! which according to GM commentary gives up any advantage that black had.

I hear you though, we never got to see game 8 bc of the time trouble.

To me, clock/time management is part of the game. Seems pointless to hypothesize about "sans time trouble". I'll chalk it up to general "bad form" instead.

Although I was rooting for Kamsky to win this Match, I just have to say that the overall stronger player, (Topalov), won this Match, pretty much, basically, because, (in my opinion), Topalov is a stronger player than Kamsky.


Chess Fan

You could argue that one world championship match (K-K 1978) was won on time.

But either way (and I'm sure that's not your intention), it plays down the winner's achievement. Topalov set enough problems that Kamsky couldn't handle them.

But let's be realistic. Kamsky won a knockout lottery tournament, and was and still is around #17 in the world. In the grand tradition of Khalifman, Ponomoriov and Kasimzhanov, he's a very good player but not quite good enough to be a world championship challenger. He fought well (better than I thought he would, I predicted a +3 drubbing) but the result was entirely to be expected.

Anand vs Kamsky in 1995 is one instance where a Candidates game (first game, not the match) was won on time. IN that game Anand could barely make 32 or 33 moves and it was all over. And after that, he went on to win games 3, 9 and 11 (all others drawn). Probably, the only occasion in candidates where the only one win was on time.