Topalov has scored a critical win today to even things up at 4-4. After 2 horrendous losses in game 2 and 4, Topalov seems to have calmed down. Now there are only 4 games to go with everything on the line.
It is purely a battle of nerves and mental toughness the rest of the way. After this loss and 2 straight draws with White, Anand needs to get back on track to regain momentum which has just shifted back to Topalov’s side after game 8. Anand’s team is also under tremendous pressure to come up with something for game 9.
The good thing for Anand is tomorrow is a day off. This gives him a chance to recoup and be in the right state of mind for the next game.
What is your take? Who has played better overall in the first 8 games?
| Anand, Viswanathan | g | India | 2787 | 0 | 1 | ½ | 1 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 0 | . | . | . | . | 4 | |
| Topalov, Veselin | g | Bulgaria | 2805 | 1 | 0 | ½ | 0 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | . | . | . | . | 4 |
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Topalov!
Both players had played very well. Topalov for his agressive play and Anand for his great defending.
Excellent victory for the new World Champion soon to be!!! 🙂
if the question is who has played better, its Anand. But to answer who blundered most is also Anand. Topalov had a good prep but we know its hardly his. Anyway in a match real score matters and as of now it stands equal!
Anand needs to find a better opening line for black, the slav line he has played so far holds no more than a draw for black, and we know Topalov can grind down black in such games.
Quite the match so far, gotta like the Sofia rules in a way. Nothing boring that’s for sure!
They both made mistakes. It’s equal.
My guess is the Main Round is going to be tied up at 6-6 and I favour Topalov to Win the Rapids.
In majority of games played so far there has been a slow footing and powerful grab of positional play in every game by Topalov .
All the Best to Anand to Defend his Crown !!!
Anand was not clever to play a defensive style when he is a point up. Insteat, he should have played with a little more stamina.
Hup Topalov !
Astrologically, it does not look good for Anand on Thursday, just as it was not good for him today astrologically, also. I find it interesting that Anand represents a country noted for its respect for astrology, and yet he chose this time to compete for the championship…
I agree with one of the posters on another thread. Ms. Kosteniuk seemed to have no clue as to why Anand resigned. She couldn’t offer any proper explanation. She’s either clueless or someone is typing for her using Rybka. It’s sad to see how weak the reigning women’s champion is. She’s not even in the top 10 in the world among active women players. Chessdom should go back to Christian Bauer and the young Bulgarian IM. They’re much better.
Where’s the consistency Susan? I don’t understand. Earlier you said the loss before the rest day hurt topalov,now you say its good for anand
Topalov and Anand are 2 different players. They handle losses very differently. Anand is also 5 years older.
Best wishes,
Susan Polgar
Astrologically? 😀 Say, haven’t you chosen the wrong sport/game? Chess is a game of logic, not of voodoo non-sense. It is dictated by intelligence, ability and mental stability, not by hallucinations and century-old manipulations. Get a grip!
Back on the subject: I think the players are dead equal in terms of their abilities and what they’ve shown so far. However, Topalov definitely has the edge now, because he has a serious psychological advantage.
I am annoyed by some of the actions of Topalov’s team and of the organizers, but I am also equally annoyed with the clear bias in the online chess community against him. Chess evaluations and comments should be as objective as possible and based on the game, not on political intrigues and unproved claims (Toiletgate, cheating, Danailov’s behavior etc.) It seems like a lot of people root for Anand and spit out biased, and quite often even offensive comments (GM Nigel Short’s comment, for example, that Topalov is not a very sophisiticated person and should play soccer instead of chess), based not on the players’ performance at the board, but on their personalities and all kinds of other irrelevant factors. I find this quite disturbing and annoying.
I personally care about one thing and one thing only: good, interesting, exciting, engaging chess. I want to hear unbiased, objective comments on both players’ moves and strategies and I want the better player to win – everything else is unnecessary non-sense. And whereas I find Topalov’s position and behavior regarding Sofia Rules unacceptable, I think the rules themselves are a very good thing, because they make the match a lot more exciting. I don’t like the politics of it, but I do like the end result and that’s what counts.
To follow up on Short’s anology, rooting for someone, anyone, in a chess match, especially a match of this caliber brings the game down to the intellectual level and tradition of sports like Soccer and American football. So maybe Short should take his insulting, uncultured comments to the soccer pitch himself.
Ms. Polgar, I would like to personally thank you for your great, unbiased commentary of the match – it is a rare breath of fresh air in all this stench of rotten allegiances.
Astrologically? 😀 Say, haven’t you chosen the wrong sport/game? Chess is a game of logic, not of voodoo non-sense. It is dictated by intelligence, ability and mental stability, not by hallucinations and century-old manipulations. Get a grip!
Back on the subject: I think the players are dead equal in terms of their abilities and what they’ve shown so far. However, Topalov definitely has the edge now, because he has a serious psychological advantage.
I am annoyed by some of the actions of Topalov’s team and of the organizers, but I am also equally annoyed with the clear bias in the online chess community against him. Chess evaluations and comments should be as objective as possible and based on the game, not on political intrigues and unproved claims (Toiletgate, cheating, Danailov’s behavior etc.) It seems like a lot of people root for Anand and spit out biased, and quite often even offensive comments (GM Nigel Short’s comment, for example, that Topalov is not a very sophisiticated person and should play soccer instead of chess), based not on the players’ performance at the board, but on their personalities and all kinds of other irrelevant factors. I find this quite disturbing and annoying.
I personally care about one thing and one thing only: good, interesting, exciting, engaging chess. I want to hear unbiased, objective comments on both players’ moves and strategies and I want the better player to win – everything else is unnecessary non-sense. And whereas I find Topalov’s position and behavior regarding Sofia Rules unacceptable, I think the rules themselves are a very good thing, because they make the match a lot more exciting. I don’t like the politics of it, but I do like the end result and that’s what counts.
To follow up on Short’s anology, rooting for someone, anyone, in a chess match, especially a match of this caliber brings the game down to the intellectual level and tradition of sports like Soccer and American football. So maybe Short should take his insulting, uncultured comments to the soccer pitch himself.
Ms. Polgar, I would like to personally thank you for your great, unbiased commentary of the match – it is a rare breath of fresh air in all this stench of rotten allegiances.
Kosteniuk is a terrible commentator, one of the worst. I wish Chessdom would just drop her and allow others to take over the commentary. She didn’t understand the game at all. Her analysis is way off the mark. Come on chessdom, get someone better please. What about Cheparinov or another GM?
susan,
do you think you can decrease the size of your front page? it costs me a fortune to check your commentary on my mobile phone.
thanks,
ivan
Excellent victory for the new World Champion NOT to be!!!… 🙂
ALAS! The situation says that Anand is going to come back and this game’s win is all that Topalov will remember from this year’s championship…
I think both players have played about even, as the score suggests. Most people thought it would be a close match and it is. I think Topalov has a good chance to win the match because he plays to win with Black. Anand is gambling on winning with White and just drawing with Black, I think that’s dangerous and could cost him!
I can understand why the fans like Topalov’s play, but I don’t care for it at all. He wins by forcing his opponent to spend a lot of time, resulting in errors.
Anand wins by playing good chess.
I would say Anand’s energy level must be flagging, because he should not have lost this game.
On the other hand, over the years I have observed a rather high error rate from Anand—for someone of his caliber.
I thought Anand would switch to another opening in game 8, as he had already gotten maximum advantage out of that line of the Slav.
I think he will probably play the Catalan again tomorrow.
I think Anand is showing signs of fatigue. He was outplayed positionally today. Or maybe the whole idea of Rc8 in the opening, allowing Bb5, is just bad.
I don’t have better ideas, but it seems the idea of pushing the f pawn f7 – f5 – f4 weakened the white squares. lost that pawn and generally did not work out well. Maybe Anand didn’t know what to do so he just pushed something.
Both sides have help with opening preparation not just Topalov. To say Topalov gets the most help, when it’s Anand who is making the first new move in most games as Susan points out, is questionable.
I think now the chances are 60% for Topalov, 40% for Anand.
It is always more difficult to retain the title than to challenge for it.
The Champion has more experience, but the challenger has more hunger, more desire.
Even though losing a match like this for the Champion is not pleasant, there is a certain relief at not having to keep defending this “Title”.
Kamalakanta
After getting a hyper active position with black in game 7, he had the mental upper hand and could take home this game 8 in a better way than playing moves like Bd2-c3. I am surprised that Topalov went against his style and went into a slow endgame. But I am also surprised that Anand did not handle the slow endgame and broke down in the end. In the first six games, Anand was more impressive, but games 1, 7 and 8 are Topalov’s games. Right now I think Topalov is playing better, in other words, has a better mental position. Cheers from Stockholm, Sweden.
artichoke, you’re sadly mistaken. Kosteniuk didn’t have a clue why Anand resigned. She posted some BS comments. Long after the game was over, she posted what Polgar posted after she was criticized on multiple sites for being clueless.
I think it is even at this point. I might give Anand a slight + at this point, but that is really infinitesimal. I expect an interesting 4 games. With luck, this means, adios la slav (As a solely dutch player, I am not fond of this defence ;)), perhaps after a quiet period things will heat up. 😉
Kosteniuk is a pretty girl, and she plays well. She’s proud to be a “chess queen”. Let it be, she knows that Judith is 1rst with 2682.
I think the fact That the world champ isn’t given draw odds makes it harder to accept topalov as the 16th classical champion should he win on tiebreaks. It is a negative product of danailovs control and influence. World champions should have draw odds as the previous ones.
You’re blind. She’s not the top 10 prettiest girl and she’s not in the top in chess. She won 1 knockout tournament. She’s not even the best in her country. That’s it. She’s best with a self inflated ego. It’s a pity that she chose to promote the lame part about herself instead of focusing on improving her chess.
Judit is the chess queen. Yifan Hou is way better than her. So is Humpy Koneru. So are 10 other female players. She and her team lied that she became a grandmaster at age 14. She didn’t. They claimed she won multiple world championship titles. She didn’t.
Why should anyone allow her to get away with the BS? She had no idea what went on in the game. Admit it and move on.
I’m afraid my original fears about Anand may prove correct—that he does not have the physical conditioning necessary for a grueling match.
He has always looked fat and out of shape. Does he even have a trainer? Does he exercise at all besides walking?
Look at Kramnik. Despite suffering from a debilitating degenerative disease, he has maintained good physical condition in recent years. In fact, he looks better now than he did 3 years ago.
Looking at the momentum factor, it seems to be swinging in Topalov’s way. He held two games in a row as black with great games and then won again as white. It is starting to look like Topalov will finish strong and Anand not so, but I hope this is not the case. Go Anand!
Great win by Topalov…..in terms of just sitting there and waiting for the blunder….and he got it! Anands biggest drawback has always been that he’s content to coast. Look at all his Blacks!!!! When did he ONCE fight for the initiative? Not once! He just turtled up and with white…he plays not too aggressive lines hoping he can squeeze something out of Topalovs sometimes impulsive play. I have tremendous respect for both these players…but they’re certainly no Kasparov..Fischer..etc. They don’t dominate the chess world like some of the older champs did..yet the last 4 games WILL be fun to watch! No predictions from me…I don’t care who wins…as long as we get great chess.
Goku
One thing that I seem to notice in Anand – he is not naturally aggressive player. He seems to lact the killing urge on the board. But when things go wrong or provoked, the sleeping tiger wakes up! He is definitely superior in his calculations and has a natural talent than Topalov. We are on for a treat in the next game! Can’t wait!
If you look at Game 7, it was basically Anand calculating over the board, while Topalov playing a deeply prepared line. Once Topalov started taking time for his moves, he missed moves such as …g5 that Rybka showed to be seriously strong.
On ICC today, the collective wisdom of several GMs, helped with the analysis of computers, was that Topalov was missing the best lines once he had a potentially winning position. Don’t know if they are correct, or if Topalov simply happens to find different moves. Anand, playing with black pieces, didn’t have much scope for inaccuracies. He made some for sure, and paid deerly.
As to where this match is headed, who amongst us knows? 🙂 Let’s hope they both play great chess.
I like Anand better, but in a way, a win by Topalov will be more interesting because it sets up the possible Carlsen-Topalov match. Both exciting, attacking players. Both willing to play to the end. And a clash of personalities; hero vs. villain (a dramatic simplification, of course).
@Ivan
Though you say some good things, why in your view is football an intellectually “low” tradition, and what is intrinsically “high” about chess, since being good at chess may have no bearing on other types of intelligence?
I could even go on to say that you would be hard pressed to separate the logical element in chess from the other elements – psychology, the fact that it’s a game, and so on. If it was a closed logical system, it wouldn’t exist (or not in a way we could know). It’s logical elements doesn’t have any bearing on the truth or falsehood astrology either.
In fact take your argument further: if the game being logical implied we shouldn’t be rooting for anyone, the players then shouldn’t even be rooting for themselves. (even less so in fact.)
Why so much negativity against Kosteniuk? Yes, she is weak, yes, she is a poor comentator but who cares??
LOL at comment 36.
Yes, she is weak and shouldn’t be a commentator. This seems like a good basis for complaining about chessdom’s choice.
@Dan
I dislike rooting in any sport, and especially zealous rooting and fanatic allegiance to any team, be it in mind games or athletic sports. I do not understand how can someone feel a sense of achievement and satisfaction from the successes of someone else, to which one has not contributed anything at all. You can like a person, or a team, for some logical or sentimental reasons, and I can understand how you can feel empathy with them and be happy for their successes. However, to spend your time, money and energy in “supporting” your team by sitting on your couch, drinking beer and eating fries and shouting obscenities at the TV screen is beyond me. So is painting your face and beating up other people, simply because they “support” the other team.
Players cannot root for themselves – they can do their best to win, because they have a personal motivation in doing so and they have put a lot of effort and work into it. You haven’t. You will also not get any of the benefits they will and hence you have no logical reason to “root” for anyone. But even if you do root (based on emotions and empathy), this should not lead you to make biased comments and evaluations.
Being good at chess does have a potential bearing on a lot of other mental and intellectual activities since it teaches you logical thinking, problem solving, faster and more efficient decision making etc. Chess develops crucial cognitive skills, which you utilize on a daily basis, especially if you are a knowledge worker (which I assume the vast majority of people who follow chess closely are). Soccer, American football and most other physical, team sports on the other hand, lead mostly to other kinds of development, such as physical development, coordination, agility etc. My point was that high level chess, unlike soccer or football, requires and leads to great development in many cognitive skills. In simple words, to be a very good chess player you have to be able to THINK very well, not RUN or JUMP or KICK. In addition to all this, the process by which you acquire good skills and knowledge in chess is much more intellectual than soccer.
I don’t see how you can be hard pressed to separate the logical elements of chess from the other elements. Chess is mostly logic and knowledge, all other elements, though important, are secondary. The fact that computers can beat humans and have already beaten even some of the best is only one testament this claim. I challenge you to demonstrate the opposite.
Astrology has no bearing whatsoever on anything. It was “invented” in a time when people didn’t even know what those shining lights in the sky are and it hasn’t developed all that much ever since. There’s is absolutely no scientific proof that the position of celestial bodies or any of their characteristics for that matter have any bearing on the lives of humans, except for the most obvious physical ones, of course, such as solar activity, magnetism etc. Astrology is based on people’s naivety, fear and desire and need to believe in a higher force. It is promoted and supported by entrepreneurs, who have great financial interest in exploiting these weaknesses in a great number of people. Astrology is build mainly on mysticism and emotions, which is exactly the opposite of chess – that was my point.
Oh, btw. I am really sorry for the long, off-topic comments!
@Ivan
“…sitting on your couch, drinking beer and eating fries and shouting obscenities at the TV screen is beyond me. So is painting your face and beating up other people…”
That isn’t the nicest picture to paint of football supporters; most supporters aren’t like this. I have never “beaten up other people”, and nor have the vast majority of it’s supporters. (Actually I don’t really care about football.) Some of the negativity you get on chess message boards doesn’t support the idea that playing and following chess is more likely to make you a level-headed, rational person.
Supporting one side is beyond you, but it’s been part human life since social life began to take one side or another, be it in politics, sport, whatever. There are both good and bad aspects to that, and if you want to critique it that’s fine but it’s going to be around for a long time. And ceteris paribus, what’s wrong with people having fun?
“Players cannot root for themselves.”
You want yourself to win, so essentially you’re rooting for yourself. There’s nothing in the rules that says you must play to win. It’s part of human nature that wants to play a game and win.
(Your point was that chess is inherently logical therefore there’s no logical reason to root for one side or another, but if this is the case the players, even if they do play to win, shouldn’t mind if they fail. But they evidently do.)
“But even if you do root (based on emotions and empathy), this should not lead you to make biased comments and evaluations.”
I guess by “you” you mean people in general here? If they do, I think it depends on the spirit in which it’s written. If they’re having fun supporting their side, most people won’t begrudge them a bit of bias – a bias they would usually admit. Chess evaluations is a different story.
I take your point that chess can help develop various cognitive skills. It can also keep one’s intellect sharp as you get older. But my point that it is not necessarily an indication of intelligence in all respects stands. There was a BBC Horizon documentary with Susan Polgar which addressed this notion of different types of intelligence very well: http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2007/04/grey-power-battle-of-brains-bbc-tv.html. I recommend it if you can find it. It is possible to be brilliant at chess and little else. It’s also possible to be a football fan or player and be a renaissance man/woman… Of course, chess might seem like a rather elevated, rarefied pursuit. Perhaps it is, but that doesn’t seem to support the general points you make.
“I challenge you to demonstrate the opposite.”
Well, computers still can’t beat humans with total consistency, but perhaps the main point here is that, in a sense, *computers aren’t playing chess*. They are following (mechanically) a series of step-by-step instructions, and unaware that they are playing a game. I would argue that a necessary prerequiste to truly playing a game is to know that you are playing a game. Otherwise there is no contest, no desire to win or understanding even that there is a goal. (The programmers wanting their computer to win doesn’t count.) The fact that the way computers play chess, on the most obvious level, is completely different to humans is just ancillary to this. It’s quite a subtle series of points really, but I find it very interesting!
@Ivan
I’m not concerned with the truth or falsity of astrology at the moment my point is that chess has no bearing on it.
Dan, I never claimed that play chess can make you universally intelligent. I said it develops your cognitive skills, which football doesn’t. This fact, along with the methods of acquiring the skills and knowledge in chess vs. football make it a more intellectual sport in comparison.
I also never said that playing chess makes you a rational level-headed person. Please read my comments carefully.
I am familiar with the documentary on Ms. Polgar. I don’t see what it has to do with our discussion here however.
I never claimed that “chess has any bearing on astrology”. In fact I don’t even understand what you mean by that. What I said in response to one of the comments here is that astrology has absolutely no influence on the outcome of chess games.
@Dan
Whether computers know or don’t know that they are playing a game is completely irrelevant here. How they play the game is also irrelevant. Computer programming is based on logic. Hence for a computer to play a game, the game has to be based mostly on logic. Try to play football with a computer/robot and see how far you’ll get.
The issue here was whether chess is based mainly on logic or not.
Again: I challenge you to demonstrate that there’s something, ANYTHING more important in chess than logical thinking.
“Say, haven’t you chosen the wrong sport/game? Chess is a game of logic, not of voodoo non-sense. It is dictated by intelligence, ability and mental stability, not by hallucinations and century-old manipulations. Get a grip!”
Aren’t you back-pedalling a bit with your last comment then? The above seems to suggest you think belief in astrology and chess are incompatible, and this is related to some assocation between chess and reason/logic.
Considering astrology in India is indeed a different tradition to what it is in the West, and because I have respect for its – probably light-hearted – invocation, I wanted to comment. (No suggestion that Anand believes in it though.)
“Rooting for someone, anyone, in a chess match, especially a match of this caliber brings the game down to the intellectual level and tradition of sports like Soccer and American football.”
It was this kind of comment that made me actually do so though. Here this line of argument is brought out explicitly, in relation to taking sides, which enabled me to make some of the points I make. At the same time I’m challenging this sort of distinction between high and low sports/games.
By saying it’s based “mainly on logic” you’re saying nothing at all clear. Weren’t you saying that because it’s inherently logical it’s irrational to take sides?
@Dan
“By saying it’s based “mainly on logic” you’re saying nothing at all clear. Weren’t you saying that because it’s inherently logical it’s irrational to take sides?”
No. But I can see how what I wrote might have led you into thinking so. What I meant to say is that strong team biases and fan culture are traditionally associated with other types of sports, usually less intellectual (in the sense already discussed in detail above) and more physical. The archetype of modern professional sports аre ancient spectacles, such as gladiatorial games. Physical sports are and have always been more exciting for the general public for various reasons, one of which is their far greater accessibility in comparison to mind games. It doesn’t take much intelligence, knowledge or skill to understand, follow and appreciate sports: most of them are a self-explanatory demonstration of grace, strength, speed, skill, etc. Hence it is also a lot easier and straightforward for physical sports to develop a wider following and fan community than mind games.
I do believe that chess and astrology are incompatible. But it is not because chess is a logical game. It is because astrology cannot predict or influence the outcome of any game whatsoever.
What I meant by the comment you quoted is that the outcome of mind games is determined mostly by logic, skill and ability, not by the position of stars and planets. What I was implying is that I can see how someone could be misled to believe that astrology has some influence on a game, in which there’s a greater element of chance, or luck (even though that would still be false), but it is hard to understand how some people can even begin to imagine that mysticism can have any influence in a game so logical as chess. It’s just that the contradiction is so striking.
If we were discussing roulette or dice games for example (or even poker to some extent), I could see how somebody would claim that they are playing poorly, because the stars and planets are in this and this position and that leads them to having a bad luck. This statement would still be totally unsupported by any scientific evidence whatsoever, but it is easier to believe and digest in comparison to someone claiming they are playing bad chess, because they are having bad luck. It could of course happen in one or two games, but in 6 or 12 or 24… Unless of course you believe that the position of the stars and planets make you less intelligent in this time of the year 🙂
But all that aside, is chess really such a logical game anyway, even without resorting to the kind of philosophical points I was trying to make. It ppears to be. In principle there may be an optimal move in any position, which could be findable with perfect calculation.
But as is generally acknowledged, the permutations are far beyond what the human mind can ever hope to comprehend, and even the most advanced supercomputers that technology can envisage don’t approach it. Therefore, always and everywhere, intuition, for want of a better description, comes into the picture. Where making slightly more fractionally sub-optimal moves than your opponent can make the difference, the intuition to see your way through will always be an inseparable factor.
Perhaps it’s interesting too that although you can describe the permutations objectively (though only in principle), there isn’t an algorithm to determine how to describe a position objectively in day-to-day chess language.
We can see clearly there is an essential, perfect, logical component, also inseparable, to the game, but it misleads us into thinking that chess, for us as human beings, is therefore a thing of pure logic. It is not about luck over a long period, certainly (assuming the opponents aren’t a perfect match in regard to skill).
Below this it is always a game between two human beings. There are the elements of psychology, (whatever the percentage it is a *huge* element, and for me one of the most interesting), physical fitness, motivation, mental stability, concentration, mood on the day… and indeed playing sub-optimally and tailoring your play and style to your oppponent.
I think I’ve made the main points I wanted to make anyway. Thank you for making me think more about the relation between the abstract nature of chess and the concrete facts of the games played in the world. It’s one of the things that fascinates me about it. Of course it is a slightly different tradition than the physical sports. I respect your appreciation of the game. Me, I can’t help rooting for one side enthusiastically, and will probably carry on doing so – chess needs its irrational fans after all, despite it’s niche status.