That may or may not be true. Doesn't change the fact that half hour long talks about medieval paintings have no place whatsoever DURING a game of the WC match.

meh draw

Yeah for sure I agree. I could see maybe a five minute piece or something, but the thirty minute lectures are a bit much.

Horrible match. Where is the blood? Gelfand has no balls.

Considering he got into this match by winning blitz tiebreaks (and about one slow game), he's probably hoping to do it again.

May I remind people that Anand had 3 whites out of the first 5 games? Maybe it is Anand who doesn't have balls..?

Also, I correct myself: Gelfand won two of the three candidates' matches before tiebreaks, by one win each. In fact, he had two of the three decisive slow games in the candidates' matches (out of thirty games total; the other was by Kamsky against Topalov).

you can hate Gelfand if you like, but not for his black games in the match. Can't fault him for taking the initiative with sharp openings he never played before.

The only game that's managed to get past move 30 was one of those 3, and Gelfand barely managed to hold on. I have no problem with draws at all, just with the fact that Boris seems to be intentionally directing the games into dead lines to achieve rapid draws. The games with him as black have been interesting since Anand has been playing some rather obscure lines. I'm sure Gelfand had plenty of game killing variations ready in the more main stream lines.

World championship matches often lead to interesting discussion on theory, the competitors, opening developments, etc. This match has instead only lead to discussion of why in the world are these games so incredibly lifeless, with one commentator on chessbase going to so far as to use this match as an example of the inevitable demise of classical chess itself.

I'm sure he's well aware that playing to draw is the single best way to find yourself with a loss - unless you're incredibly confident in your preparation.

In Checkers there is a 3 move restriction world championship where the first 3 moves of black (who goes first) and the first 2 moves of white are drawn by ballot.

Not all 5 move combinations work as some lead to immediate losses. There are 147 extant 3 move restriction openings.

In August 2011, Alex Moiseyev (Dublin, Ohio) retained his three-move world title over Michele Borghetti (Livorno, Italy) by a score of 7-6 with 27 draws. IIRC, the winner got $2000.

Checkers is much more drawish than chess because it is less complex hence the need for the 3 move restriction. Really pleasing to see 13 decisive games.

There is still a GAYP (go as you please) world championship and it is to be contested this year.

For more info, please go to http://www.usacheckers.com.

Wow, I always thought checkers was solved.

Yes. Checkers is solved.

However, human beings are far inferior to computers so there will still be loses.

But in GAYP we should have perfect games all the time, no?

Unless your name is Marion Tinsley?

In Matchplay, the only way to beat the champion is to beat the champion, 40 draws are no good which means the challenger will have to search out a winning game which may mean overpressing in the middle or end game or playing lines he is not 100% familiar with in order to find his win.

In casual games, a different dynamic is at work. It would just be boring to play down the same lines to the same draws.

Chess is dead. It really upsets me. We NEED to go to Chess960 but it will never happen because people never want to give up what they're used to in sports. And yes while chess isn't a 'sport' it counts as one for the purposes in which I'm talking about.

Another slav with no real advantage after 20 moves.

Looks like Boris might burn through this period of the match where he gets 3 of 4 whites.

That's Svidler co-commentating today, right? First one I think who really does an awesome job at it. Short was just obnoxious (as always), Timman seemed kinda uninterested, and yesterday I didn't watch.

yeah I like peter.
Shame they did not have him on when grunefelds when on the board.

just for the record, the first 8 games of the 1995 Kasparov-Anand match were 27, 29, 36, 21, 27, 28, 25 and 22 move draws. So chess was probably already dead 20 years ago...

It scares me that 1995 is almost 20 years ago. Gah I feel old.

Not that this would ever happen, but I would like to see Chess 960 played far more often (it discounts the decades the top players have spent studying traditional openings so I don't think they would take kindly to it becoming the main game)...and I would be curious if it would be possible to have something that would let us get a glimpse into the players thoughts during the game, like how the hole-card cam made poker explode.

One possibility may be giving each player a concealed analysis board that had a camera on it that they could use during the game. You could see if one player was analyzing a certain variation in-depth that the other player didn't even appear to see, or if the players weren't thinking about anything in a short-draw.

Or...we could just let this match end as soon as possible and get Aronian or Carlsen into the picture in anyway it can be done.

Oh, let me say also that there have been other matches that started with a lot of draws, but even that's not THAT big of a problem if the players care. Kasparov/Karpov had there 17-straight draws in the first world title match, but Kasparov was desperate to win the world title...there was a storyline there. Here, Gelfand and Anand don't seem to care in the least about the result of the match.

Well considering the loser still gets paid over a million dollars, I can't say as I blame them.