I remember the GM everybody used to "love to hate" was Karpov, and for all the same reasons. "Too defensive", "not willing to take chances", bla bla bla. Before him it was Petrosian, but that's before my time. In retrospect all of these guys are loved ... but during their reign as champs there are always whiners who long for a champion like Alekhine or Tal.

When Karpov needed to, he could win with black and he had a repertoire that enabled him to go out and play for the full point with both colours. When he needed to rack up the wins, he could

<After discussing what he's doing (going around here and there representing Russia and starting various chess schools), he offered various opinions about contemporary chess.

* He doesn't like knockout events either for the world championship or for world championship cycles.

* Thinks 12 games is too short; 16 is about right.

* Thinks chess has changed over the last few years, but not so much because of the computers but the time control. It makes the game younger. Also, the loss of adjournments has hurt the quality of the game.

* He doesn't see anyone dominating chess in the foreseeable future like and Kasparov did. Maybe, he thinks, this is due to computers, but he's not sure.

* On current ratings, he thinks it's clear that there's inflation. He also thinks that ratings are generally overrated.

* Here's something bound to be controversial: he thinks Anand has become more mechanical thanks to his work with computers. Maybe he plays more accurately, but he has lost some fantasy, some creativity.

* Asked about creative players of today, he only referred to Morozevich, and this after prompting from Seirawan. Noted Morozevich's willingness to risk, and that this allowed him to sometimes have very good results and occasionally very bad results.

* About young players, he opined that Rajdabov had "missed his best time" already, by which he seemed to mean that his development had reached a premature stagnation, such that it's unlikely he'll develop to the very highest level of play. He was very positive about Carlsen, but felt that he is maybe missing some parts of his chess education. Had Carlsen been in Russia from an early age, Karpov feels that he'd have already become world champion.

Anand just has analyzed Kramnik's game to a T. He is posing all kinds of problems and Kramnik is having a lot of trouble to come up with answers.

This is not as sharp a game as 3 and 5 but Anand is applying a kind of squeeze that we normally associate with Vlad.