lol they make my eyes bleed.

The music makes my ears puke.

"Do you think this game came down to you playing well, or your opponent playing not so well?"

haha

Joint press conferences are so weird. Why do they do it that way?

It was funny to hear WGM Karlovich give instructions in Russian ('Girls, hold the mic closer, please!') and so speak a weird mix of languages.

But it's even more hilarious that the outcome of tonight's WCC game was 'predicted' in Chessexplained's blitz #2001 published this morning, where GM YARDBIRD (Eric Lobron) blundered mate in 2, also by a 7th rank Q+R battery, in a somewhat better (though OCB) position.

Hahaha!
OMG, how did I not know about this?

is this the match that decides my challenger?

After 29. Qa6:

I can't watch these press conferences, they make me cringe.

Perhaps because other than the players discussing particular moves/variations, it's hard to talk about anything, but the questions are usually so bad.

Anand's Match 3 strategy worked perfectly:

There's at least one good reason to watch the press conferences imo:

Saw this on twitter, hahah.

Yes. There was much shrugging to be had from the Carlsen side after this one.

Wow, that's what she looks like? I only ever see her at the end of these matches and she always is wearing sort of harsh makeup and looks like she hasn't slept in a week.

That's amazing. The one non chess question I thought was worth asking was if the Tiger was back. While Anand side stepped it, I think it's important to keep asking this whenever he wins just to make sure.

Very strange choice by Carlsen to go in for this position. He doesn't seem very well prepared for this match if he gets blown out like this in only the second game with Black.

If Anand keeps playing well, Carlsen could be in trouble.

He's probably just gotten too used to all the hookers & blow world chess champions have 24/7 access to. Anand has been there before and probably likes his chances.

What? It's a completely normal line..? How can you make an assumption Carlsen is not well prepared when he had no problems out of the opening in g1, great position out of the opening in g2 and completely fine position out of the opening in g3?

game, blouses



an aronian game from last year had the same first 19 moves, and vishy says he was in prep until move 24. sick.

well, the position today was objectively fine, but it's not Carlsen fine. It's a super-topical, complex line that was played in Inarkiev-Leko today and a bunch of other super-GM games in Tashir. Anand probably has 30 novelties after move 12 in this line - he's already won one World Championship this way.

That said, I expect Carlsen was happy enough with the openings in rounds 1 and 2. Interested to see if he switches back to the Gruenfeld or if he sticks with this.

I don't really see how you can say he got a normal position from the opening. He was considerably worse by the time they even left theory.

I mean the line with the pawn on c7 might be okay for Black if he defends perfectly, but it's really concrete. It's a strange line to play without having very detailed preparation.

Yeah, given that the same game has already been played almost in its entirety before*, it's hard to say that Vishy wasn't better prepared today...

*pawn on h2 as opposed to h3

I'm a Magnus fan and still think he's going to win this pretty easily, but this picture is bad-ass...

It is hard to argue when you have hindsight at your disposal.. and yet still.
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As far as I can tell, Anand has like 3 semi-recent games with Bf4 in this line. Moreover, he had, until today, 0 games with c5 push. Carlsen uses c6, which, even though topical, is still obscure compared to the main Nh5, probably hoping to take Anand a bit out of book after his surprise c5. That is of course a risky decision, since, as we saw, Carlsen did not know those lines perfectly himself. However, it is clear that he was aware of the previous Aronian games in the line, therefore he knew at least 19-20 moves of "theory". It is completely understandable for him to expect that his knowledge will not be less than Anands, who doesn't even play Bf4 regularly, not to mention c5. It just so happened, that Anand was absolutely ridiculously well prepared in a line he had no business being so well prepared in!

There is a massive difference in not being well prepared, and being out-prepared. To me this shows nothing wrong with Carlsen's prep, but it speaks volumes about the work Anand and his team has put in. Give him credit for that, rather than saying "Carlsen was poorly prepared", which is simply not true. Unless, of course, knowing 20 moves of theory in a line that has like 1% chance of happening in this match is not being well prepared..

I'm no theoretician, but it seems to me it was careless at best to get caught in such a line. Whatever Anand plays, you can expect him to have done his homework, especially in a World Championship match. He's one of the best prepared players of all time, the 2008 match vs. Kramnik being a case in point, and the finest moment of his career IMHO. So playing ...c6, expecting to take him "a bit out of book", well I guess you take your chances...

That said, I still expect Carlsen to win the match and certainly not to make another similar mistake. At least we'll have a decent fight now, hopefully this should bring out the best in Carlsen and we'll have some great viewing