I agree. The entire purpose of the match format is to determine the better player; why assume that your opponent can play out a certain draw? Isn't the entire point to test the other player in all aspects of the game, rather than to arbitrarily pick a point at which you assume your opponent is your equal and stop pressing?

If Gelfand is/was going to press, games 6 & 7 would be the time to do it because he has back-to-back White pieces. If Gelfand does not win Game 7, the only thing he can play for is hoping the added pressure on Anand will conjure up a blunder.

As the others have pointed out though, if they do not play out equal positions long enough they reduce the chances and opportunities for their opponent to make mistakes.

I think that is one thing that is missing from the Fischer/Karpov/Kasparov lineage of great players. They typically did not let their opponents off easy unless they were worse. They would play on (in most cases, not all cases) and let their opponents find the best moves to maintain equality, because they were confident enough in their own abilities they thought their opponent would make an error before they did.

As much as I admire Kramnik as a player, he let far too many draws go to inferior players. I think Anand was better at this than Kramnik, but maybe only slightly.

Hopefully Carlsen/Aronian/few others/ will turn up the heat and not let draws go so easily. I understand they have to conserve energy, but it's a fine line between not taking chances and boring the sponsors and audience to death in the process.

This match may yet to prove compelling, but at the moment there is not much intrigue and unless it provides a spark, will hurt sponsorship for the next big match.

Exactly. And he's suggesting that it would be unreasonable to make them play chess to actually achieve that result.




Then let them do that instead.

I do not think the players "agreed" to a draw in this match so far. The games were actually drawn, and nothing was left in them. I think neither of them would let go of the opportunity to push on, if there were even the slightest semblance of an advantage. The match is till on. And, we have to remember, that top players have discussed Anand's only weakness to be in blockaded positions. Although Boris has so far not been able to create a blockaded position in a game, he's steering it well in that direction in the overall match as such. It may not altogether be a bad strategy. It's probably a way to continue the match by ending the game, instead of simplifying the match by continuing with the game.

Mitzvah seemed to have a semblance of an advantage in Game 1, but didn't press on.

But if you're right, if there was no semblance of an advantage, then the games would have been drawn under Sofia Rules also, so that's no reason not to use them.

But Chessoutpost is right about the great players not letting their opponents off too easily. This game was probably drawn as early as Move 7, but it didn't end up that way.

Geller-Fischer, 1970

It is necessary to actually provide that best play, not just assure us that it's there somewhere.

I don't know. But I think it is a kind of move both patzer's and GM's would afraid to make for the fear that the isolated pawn would become long term liability. For the patzer's it violates the general chess principles. For the GM's it would be difficult to calculate to see if there is a guaranteed draw.

So, how would a computer know that the move was safe?

Compare this game with Petrosian-Botvinnik, Game 5, in which a similar e pawn really was a chronic weakness in a Queenless middlegame. But there were different piece sets on the board in that game, and more minors. With the piece set in this game, it wasn't a serious weakness. But how would a computer know that?

How do computers know anything? They are mindless, after all.

Isolated pawn but a slightly different position since black had queenside majority. Tough position to accurately assess but to me it looks like black is more than ok or even better because of the queenside majority! Strong computers could show a better assessment. I think the black loss was due to the forced c-pawn push which black failed to anticipate and eventually from dropping of that pawn.

But how would a computer know that? I think because they calculate at higher depths than human then make an assessment from the resultant position which tend to be more accurate than a human. I know in some end game positions human could assess better but here is lot of play left so human could miss out some tactical shots which computer wouldn't.

"Garry just copped out a little there in his game 3 eval. He told me earlier he was sure it was winning!" - Mig.
Chess Fan, do you see that?!!!

GMs are sort of clueless in assessing the world championship games. Obviously they cannot have the same level of opening preparation like the contenders. But even in end games, it would highly difficult for them to say something like in olden days as computers+human would now reveal true eval.