Who will win the Anand – Topalov World Championship Match? Click here to vote.
After more than 1,400 votes, 66% of the chess fans pick Anand to win and 34% pick Topalov. But why? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
Who has an edge in the following 10 areas:
1. Opening
2. Middlegame
3. Endgame
4. Nerve
5. Experience
6. Stamina
7. Recent performance
8. Team of seconds / assistants
9. Motivation
10. Intangible
Please feel free to share your opinions but please leave the personal attacks and insults out. They are both great players and I expect this to be an exciting match! I will share my assessment shortly.
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
I will just take a more basic approach and look at how they have faired against each other. By my count, they have played 86 times since 1993, and Anand is holding a +9 advantage. Now, I note that a number of those games were in the Melody Amber where half the games were rapid where Anand has been the best player in the world for quite a while, and he ain’t too shabby in the blindfold either.
The other factor I look at is their results against Kramnik, where, again, I think Anand has been superior.
I pick Anand for the experience and the temperment of being a champion level player. A lot of Topolov’s strengths will find, and have found in the past, Anand to be made of kryptonite.
How did Anand and Topalov do against Magnus?
I ate them for breakfast with my orange juice.
Bulgaria is 7 000 000 inhabitants.
How many are Indians?
One Billion ?
Two?
Of course there could not be a balanced vote…
Also,Indians are allegedly English speaking;)
For those who can catch their pronunciation 😉
Pole should be 99 to 1 for the Indian guy.
Agree with Yancey Ward.
I’ll add the following:
1.
Topalov, while very entertaining with his sacs, does not have Kasparov’s consistency. Kasparov was able to consistently show that his hunch was correct.
2.
Anand, on the other hand, plays super accurately.
3.
On the other hand, Topalov’s ability to squeeze out that win against Gelfand in a rook and pawn ending (in the last tournament) was quite something.
4.
In the batter of nerves, I think Topalov has a definite home-court advantage.
Not sure who will win. If someone breaks out ahead early, he will likely have a huge psychological advantage.
I expect Anand to have a big edge in opening preparation.
Topalov has better nerves, IMO.
Kramnik and Anand are close in strength, but Topalov objectively is a small notch below them.
His higher rating is a matter of his success at defeating opponents with enterprising but bad play.
I didn’t even think he showed a clear edge against Kamsky, except that Kamsky could not cope with the pressure.
Even Kamsksy is a much more interesting and solid player than Topalov. If he would study openings seriously (way too late now), he would be a real contender again.
Time management will be a key for Anand. He’s getting up there in age, which counts against him there, and Topalov is a player who thrives by setting his opponent problems which eat clock, even if his moves aren’t completely accurate. Vladdy says that he thinks Topalov’s weakness is defending difficult endgames-case in point, the deciding game in their 2006 match, which Topalov lost with a gruesome blunder (though he would have struggled anyway). The x factor is opening preparation-since we have no idea what the players have done to prepare, we can’t say, and opening preparation is everything at that level. I think Anand will finally prevail by exploiting some inaccurate play by Topalov.
Until proven othewise,Topalov is the better player.His rating demonstrates this.For the last few years he’s been over 2800.
As any serious chessplayer knows rating shows the real strength.
Other explaining lower rating is a bulls..t
I favor Anand, and I strongly hope
that Anand wins.
But the 10 areas listed in this questionaire overlook
one very important area:
homeground advantage for Topalov.
How can the home ground be an advantage? Does Topa have moves taped to the bottom of the table or is the Bulgarian songs singing moves in the background?
I think Vishy is going to eat Topa for dinner.
After Anand’s match with Kasparov in 1995 he hasn’t shown any nerves. He grew up as a player after that. All talk about Topa handling nerves better is just unfounded.
1. Opening. Anand. Reason he showed he can open with d4 something he had never done before and still win. Haven’t seen anything special from Topa yet.
2. Middle Game: Probably even. Anand does like to give the opponent complex situations to solve and Topa likes to get into complex situations. So middle games will be very interesting.
3. End game. Anand is superior here. He cannot be a top 5 player for 20 years if his end game wasn’t excellent. Topa can match him but exceeding him is less likely although not impossible.
4. Nerve. I already answered this one. Anand has put to rest all nerves after his 1995 game with Kasparov. He was a very nervous kid that time. (He still drew the first blood though)
5. Experience. Anand. Been there done that. Only champion in all three formats. Topa is just a tad less but he has a golden opportunity to change that.
6. Stamina. Topa. Being the younger guy he could be the one with more stamina. Anand knows how to pace himself because of past experience. So this is an equal match with a tilt towards Topa.
7. Recent performance: Both. Anand drew all the games and beat Kramnik. Topa was a free spirit and played very very well. Anand clearly had no desire to win just wanted to get match practice. But Topa might have the advantage there.
8. Team of seconds. Topa. Anand I think does not know who are Topa’s seconds. Topa knows. So that’s an advantage right there. We will have to wait and see how much that matters.
9. Motivation: Topa. Big time. What can be more motivating than becoming WCC. A big motivation certainly. Having said that the recent comments by BCF against Anand might have fired him up and he will be eager to stamp his authority before leaving bulgarian soil. BCF gave a huge dose of motivation to Anand.
10. Intangible. Topa has some. Especially the home advantage. familiar conditions, same place where he beat Kamsky, comfort level. For Anand his steady play, solid preparation, fast play when needed will come in handy.
All in all a championship between two worthy players. We will see some great chess matches. May the better player win!
Basky
Just to correct Yancey – in games with classic games control, Topalov leads Anand 11:10, so the +9 score you quote is highly misleading thanks to the abundance of rapid games. And Topalov leads in recent games too – his 25-move win agains Anand in Bilbao in 2008 hardly confirms your claim that Anand is made of kryptonite.
Finally, how they faired against Kramnik is completely irrelevant – Kramnik has a plus score against Kasparov while Kasparov’s score against Vishy 26:8 – by your logic, Kramnik should’ve won in Bonn 😉
Basky,
That was an excellent and well balanced analysis of the strength and we2akness of each player! and you still missed few points though.
I think home court advantage is over-rated in chess (for that matter, any sports!) unless you really rig it totally against the opponent with any illegal influence…. which I don’t doubt the Bulgarians are willing to do from the highest level of the Govt (even @ a PM/President level, this win means more to Bulgaria that solving any single major social problems of that country)…. well, which kinda defeats my assertion that home court advantage is over-rated.
if Anand can really win this match with all these uncertainties of playing in totally hostile territory with sleazeballs like Danailov and BCF hanging around in the same zip code, then he deserves to be mentioned on or below par with Kasparov. even if he doesn’t win, he still has a shot at Kasparov with whatever left of his career.
and as for other things you missed, I’ll try to cover in my next post.
Susan, c’mon, I never heard you pass your opinion on this kinda matter. let’s know what you think.
Susan, why do you tolerate comments like the preceding (1:35:00)? How would you feel if I were to accuse the Hungarian cabinet of intentional sabotage, sleaziness, and propaganda against certain ethnic minorities during recent chess tournaments, just because I might not like the Hungarian Chess Federation? Why do you allow people on your blog to attach political significance to chess, especially people, who, from their remarks, appear to be sadly ignorant, but confident that they know too much about the political and social problems of countries, whose cultural richness, for instance, their own glorious “home of the brave” cannot match an iota? One reason that I started avoiding your previously excellent blog is that you let your readers take over and wage insult after insult not only against chess players, but against nations, cultures, and anything else that comes in handy. Despite your warning, they continue to illustrate their primitive and aggressive values and ruin the pleasure of enjoying chess competition for what it should be – a clash of strategy, intellect, creativity, and talent!
@Anonymous 9:54:00
I understand your Bulgarian pride is dented by the previous comment. but, no need to take a “wise” dig at America or Hungary… both countries made considerably more contribution to the world society than the folk-dancing “rich” tradition of Bulgaria.
secondly, any reasonably intelligent Chess fan would understand that there’s a considerable chance of this match being rigged illegally in Topalov’s favor big time based on simple facts
– Topalov-Danailov past reputation among reasonably intelligent fans
– The Bulgarian govt itself sponsoring this match
– the nutjobs in BCF already accusing of Anand many things including hiding underground in Bulgaria
– The countries premiere is hanging around in this match like he doesn’t have nothing better to do.
– Topalov himself saying this is the biggest event of that country.
– Organizing committee is totally biased against the reigning champion and unconcerned about his legitimate problems of travel.
All these doesn’t tell you anything about the desperation of Bulgarians to win something at any cost?
I don’t know if they will let Anand leave the country alive, god forbid if he wins this match!
Anonymous 10:33 should be buggered with a fish fork.
These polls are useless as its mostly us Indians in these blogs and will have tremendous bias for Anand. Games 8 through 12 is going to be a good test to see how Anand fares, I wouldn’t be surprised if Topalov wins 2 or loses 2 from here on