World chess championships

By Frank “Boy” Pestaño
Chessmoso

THE World chess championship between Viswanathan Anand,39 and Vladimir Kramnik ,33, started last Tuesday in Bonn ,Germany and will conclude on Nov. 2 excluding tiebreaks. The prize of 1.5 million Euros will be split equally between the players.

Two games have been played thus far, both draws. Although, a pawn down Anand had an effortless first game with black in an Exchange Slav and surprised Kramnik with 1.d4 in his first white game. Anand was pressing for a win but accepted the
draw offer after being in time trouble.

The match is best of 12 games under Classical time controls. Time per player is two hours, with 1 hour added after move 40, 15 minutes added after move 60, and 30 seconds increment per move starting from move 61.

It will be a battle of technique, concentration, imagination, nerves determination, attitude, and above all else, preparation.

If the score is equal , up to three rounds of tiebreaks will be played. The first round will be four rapid games. Time control for these games is 25 minutes plus 10 seconds per move. If the score is still equal after the four rapid games, two blitz games will be played (5 minutes plus 10 seconds per move).

If the score is still equal after the two blitz games, a single Armageddon game will be played (6 minutes for white, 5 minutes for black, without any increments and black declared champion in case of a draw).

In their head-to-head matches, Anand is ahead, 19-13, with 82 games ending in draws. They have played 65 games in rapid and blitz with Anand winning 15 and losing 7. An interesting point is that Kramnik has never won a game against Anand in Classical time controls with black.

Kramnik performs better in matches as opposed to tournament play and has won all of his one-on-one championship matches against Garry Kasparov in 2000, Peter Leko in 2004 and Veselin Topalov in their unification match in Elista 2006.

Kasparov thinks that Kramnik is the slight favorite.

Anand performs better in tournament play as opposed to matches and is superb in rapid and blitz matches in case of tiebreaks. He was Fide champion in 2000-2002 and unified champion in Mexico in 2007.

In a match at this level, seconds are critical in match preparation and Kramnik seems to have the advantage. He has Sergei Rublevsky,Laurent Fressinet and most important Peter Leko.

Anand has Peter Nielsen, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Radoslav Wojtaszek and Surya Shekhar Ganguly. There are talks that he has received some inputs from Boy Wonder Magnus Carlsen.

Kramnik: “I am very happy to have Peter (Leko) in my team. It is difficult to find any better candidate. First of all he has match experience, secondly he is a very strong chess player—I can really feel immediately the difference—and also we have very good personal relations, apart from the fact that we played a match, and a pretty dramatic one, but it never spoiled our relations.”

Anand: “(Peter Leko) was working with me for my match against Karpov, but it has been like ten years since we last worked together. For me it is normal—Peter had an interesting offer and he considered it.”

Kramnik on the effect of the live video broadcast by Foidos on his concentration: “I will try to comb my hair a little better for the games.” Anand: “I don’t think that Maria Sharapova should be too worried about competition from us.”

TALISAY. Allerie Somosot was the October winner with Yves Fiel, Rex Baylosis and Ryan Villacorta as runners up. Kiddies winner was Roy Jason Ortueste.