Future readers won't understand how funny this post is. >

BUT...he hasn't done so just yet. I can understand him wanting to stabilise the ship with White in game 7 and simply draw with Black on game 8.

<Four games left to equalise.

I predict he will go all out as White and try and draw as Black. Then try and win in the rapid tiebreakers.

Game 9 should be an interesting struggle if this evaluation of Anand's strategy is correct. All his life he's been a fighter, and now he faces the most powerful opponent he could possibly face, younger, fitter, stronger and possibly even hungrier.

I predict the next 4 games will be a real struggle.>

Yes. It is easy for us on the sidelines! Anand, even if he loses the match will still have shown he was a great player as we know his previous play. After all Kasparov was stopped in his tracks by Kramnik.

Anand might even return and beat Carlsen one day.

And your aunt could've and should've had balls.

Also, I think those Carlsen fans exist only in your angry head. This Carlsen fan was expecting two Carlsen wins and the rest draws. I expected the second win to come at the end, so he's ahead of schedule.

<Slink> <Marzahn Exchange Variation> Good...

Anand has played players closer his age. Player of Carlsen's age or younger are very hard to play. I play very good players (8,9,10,14?) who seem, while I am playing to be AWOL so to speak. They look all over the place and often seem bored (as Carlsen seems): but many of them come up with some sharp chess - in any case they will take advantage of blunders.

It is very hard to play such players. It seems far worse to lose to younger and usually lower rated player (and Anand would subconsciously think of himself as the higher rated.

So the problems are psychological. In chess terms there is not much difference in ability. Carlsen misfired through nervousness in the first three games (I actually saw him literally drop a knight when making won move) and then Anand began to make errors. The 6th game by him was clearly a reaction to his unnecessary loss the day before although Carlsen played that with some panache.

In the sixth game (when Anand was White against the Berlin and played d3 there was no reason for him to lose. He could have recaptured on b3 with the N and then pushed d4 at the right time and it would have been just a small advantage to White and probably a draw which means he would now only e 1 game down. Carlsen blundered in the first game by playing his N to c3 which could as easily have been say a blunder of piece. So, the match is not convincing.

Anand's team need to look at these (paradoxically) positive as aspects.

Carlsen clearly has played well overall if a bit phlegmatically: his problem might be that he will take things to easy, thinking he has it "in the bag".

A loss could send him into a panic especially if he then faces a difficult position: then he will start remembering what Anand has been able to achieve. But he seems pretty well adjusted for a young punk, and might just coast in.

ah yeah. Carlsen fans were predicting 10 draws, and for Carlsen to edge out Anand in 2 endgames that were clearly drawable; which any of the top 10-20 players would have good odds of doing. Okay. Yeah.>

Here's what I said September 20:

<keypusher: I expect wins will be very hard to come by in this match. Two wins for Carlsen, none for Anand seems most likely to me.>

Anand-Carlsen World Championship (2013)

I can't recall any predictions better than +3. Even if such predictions had been made, given that +3 is what happened, someone predicting +4 would be no more wrong than I was.

<Carlsen fans were all over this and every other message board; they don't just exist in my head.>

After 8 games, with the higher-rated player up by two with a maximum of four to play, 10% chance of Carlsen <not> winning looks very pessimistic to me.

Here's the article I assume was being referred to. It is an interesting read.

I don't agree with your characterization of games five and six, to put it mildly. But I'll let that be argued argued by annotators (and engines) stronger than either one of us.

I do know a little bit about chess history. And I can tell you that from Bourdonnais-McDonnell right through Anand-Gelfand, match games and even matches get decided regularly by jaw-dropping blunders.

And Anand has been pretty blunder-prone in recent years, which is why he fell down the rating table. In fact, his last two losses to Carlsen before this match included blunders at the end, albeit in lousy positions.

Given this information, which is freely available to anyone with a modem, if <no one> predicted that Anand would blunder away his title, then I can only conclude that <everyone> (except me) is an incurious, ignorant fool. (Sorry, <Everyone>.)

<I was watching game 5 live and the computer categorized 3 of Anand's last 15 moves as "weak".>

Just 20% in a difficult ending after 5-6 hours of play? And you think that's high? You've led a sheltered life.

I promise you, just start running past world championship games through an engine, and the game scores will light up like Christmas trees.

I see: my grandson's father is German and once I listened to him talking on the telephone for about 10 minutes and I had no idea of any thing he was saying! Once i heard him say the German for winter I think...when I broke my leg I was in the Krankenhaus I think it was! Kranken sound pretty cranky or brokeny!

So maybe Kennedy wasn't speaking "proper" German. I have no doubt there are many dialects.