I'm not a big fan of that match either. I do remember one game like you describe, but Littlefish's numbers from the other day showed it to have an average of 35 moves per game. There are about a half dozen games of the 14 that stand out in my memory 8 years later (Game 1, 5, 8, 12, 13, and 14), while the only game of the current match that really stands out for me is Game 9. I'm glad that a lot of the games of this match went 5-7 moves longer than that one clinker from 2004, but that's not much consolation.

The new moves that you're talking about, all of which were countered. They may be new, but were they really that hard TO counter?



Anand needed to probe harder for one. He was content to let Mitzvah self-destruct, and seemed to have no plan beyond that. He did, but only in one game, and that wasn't enough.

Were you honestly excited to see a new move that was countered immediately and led to a early exit? I can handle draws, I enjoyed both the 1927 and 1966 matches after a fashion because they featured tense struggles that led to those draws. The 1984 match I wasn't so wild about.

I was excited before it was countered. Not a few moves later. And judging by commentary from the likes of Leko, Svidler and Kramnik, none of them found the counters. So, I'd hardly think that they were no-brainers to find. Please listen to Kramnik's commentary on game 12. He positively decries Gelfand's c4 sacrifice, which he played after 50 mins of thought. The "earliness" of the exit was only in terms of ensuing moves, not the time. So, in fact the excitement lasted quite long, except in case of game 10, where Gelfand refuted that dumb Rossolimo variation in just 5 moves. But, my guess is that Anand mixed up his move order again -- his plan must have been to play b3 after d3, as he did in the last game.

He probably was also keen not to self-destruct himself. I remember one game against Aronian from the Bilbao supertournament, just before the Kramnik match. Anand got a winnable position at the end of a middlegame off a Scotch opening, but mishandled his rook play and went down. And also that Linares game against Leko where Anand lost from the black side of a Petroff with a full pawn up, making a total mess of his position through horrible rook movements. I wouldn't be surprised if such things weighed on his mind somewhere, when in the third game he rushed to cover his back rank instead of going Rc4, which could have given him winning chances. Well, commentators may find those chances through extensive analysis later and criticize, but on the board you hardly know whether it wins or might in fact lose. So, discretion has to be the better part of valor there.

Kasparov recommended that Anand should have thought for at least twenty minutes on that position, as it was a "crisis moment", which needed to be seized. (Only that Anand had just ten minutes left on his clock at that time.)

I have an idea on match format similar to what I said before but more interesting.
First to win 6 games and best of 12, whichever comes first.
If from this no-one wins after 12 games- then see who won 5 games first, 4 games first etc. until you have a winner.

It is very unlikely to be all draws so you can make whatever rule you deem suitable for that extreme case.

But in this idea different players could have the "draw odds" at different times so it would be interesting.

It would be much better to make it a 24 game match then the chance of 24 draws will be remote, and if that happened who would care?

I now realise that this just makes the tiebreak, who was in the lead last. That is a downside to this that the leads become bigger as they get draw odds too.

You have no idea what you are talking about. "First to win 6 games" will never come first over "best of 12". The last time it was attempted, I think even after 48 games nobody had won 6.

Go explain to the public at large about your magic see-saw tie-break rules, and see who draws anything other than a blank.

If a 24-game match could be played, nobody would even need a tie-break. Champion keeps title, period.

@Proloy:

I just wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed reading your **excellent** analysis of this Match so far that you wrote in your post back on page 4 of this thread.

You gave me some new and interesting insights into this Match thus far, and, I really appreciate that!

Good job, Proloy!!


Chess Fan

I agree that the games were not "lifeless" in a sense that there was a real struggle involved and the players came up with great defensive ideas. Problem was, they didn't come up with equally good attacking ideas, or didn't dare play them. In fact, I had the impression that at critical points both players almost always chose the safer alternative. Nothing outrageous, not that they deliberately tried to kill off the games, but still it's very difficult to get decisive results that way on the top level today, unless you manage to outprepare your opponent - which neither player did here. That's a big contrast with players like Aronian and Carlsen, who often find resources to complicate a seemingly dry middlegame position.

Absolutely right. That match killed the Unlimited Match forever, I fear.

It's also the reason why my preferred tiebreak (single classical games until someone wins 1) will probably never happen. It too is an "Unlimited" format. Granted, only 1 win is required, but the unlimited format seems to present troubles to organizers, who don't know how long a playing hall is required for, and can't reserve it indefinitely.

<You have no idea what you are talking about.>
I think that you are being too aggressive.
I am just trying out different ideas, and I am covering all possibilities even if they are very unlikely.

Another idea is in a match of up to 4n games, first to be in the lead after 2n games wins. So if the match is tied n-n, then it is first to win a game as in Petrosianic's idea. The match will be between 2n and 4n games. Obviously there will be a unlikely event (depending on match length) that after the first half it is tied n-n, then the second half was just 2n draws. Do whatever tiebreak you like then.

You would need flexibility on match length being from 2n to 4n games.

If you consider all possibilities, we'll get drowned in pointless detail. There are thousands of possible match formats and tiebreaks, and everyone thinks their is the best, but most won't even be looked at. If you want something that has a chance of being looked at, you've got to come up with something very simple and very unobtrusive.

A very simple example is what to do about champion's advantage. If you recall, after fighting to abolish champion's advantage, Fischer gave up his title fighting to keep it again. He wanted a 9-9 tie clause that would force the challenger to win by 2. For 1978, someone came up with a great idea: If you want the champion to have some kind of advantage, let him automatically have White in Game 1. That way, if he won 6-5 in 31 games, he'd have had the one extra White.

People loved it, and it was in the match rules for 1978, almost unanimously. It didn't make the final cut, though. They brought back the rematch clause, and people figured the champion didn't need first White on top of that, so they went back to drawing lots.

But that's still the kind of idea you have to come up with. Something simple and easy that will make large numbers of people say "Yeah! That's great!" Complicated scenarios are unlikely to do that.