Leonard Barden
The Guardian,
Saturday October 18 2008
India’s Vishy Anand and his Russian challenger Vlad Kramnik meet this afternoon in Bonn in game four of their 12-game, €1.5m world title match. The eagerly awaited showdown has lost some of its gloss due to Kramnik’s mediocre results at Dortmund and Moscow and Anand’s recent disastrous last place in Bilbao. In consequence they are currently Nos 5 and 6 in the world rankings. I can not recall a previous world title match (except for Fide’s knock-outs) where neither player was in the top two.
Basically the result is too close to call and could be effectively decided if in one game either side can unleash a computer-prepared opening bomb. Expert opinion is that the title will be either settled by a one-point margin or else go to 6-6 and tiebreaks on November 2. But Anand took a 2–1 lead yesterday after two cautious draws.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk
I like to see a Topalov – Carlsen match for the world championship.
second game was anything but cautious
I do not agree with the statement that it is the match 5th and 6th. First of all, Anand was the No.1 in a long period before the match (until the Bilbao). Now the reting of the first 5 top players are very close, after the winning game, Anand is actually the second on the live rating list.
I think we’re going to see more of this kind of phenomenon, where the World Championship might be between #’s 1-10.
The players at this level are not only extremely good, but also extremely close in abilities and it is getting harder to separate the World’s elite.