by Natalia Pogonina for her
Chess.com Tuesday column

This year both the Women’s Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships were announced – thanks to the Association of Chess Professionals and Batumi, Georgia, the city which agreed to host it. This news came as a pleasant surprise for many players, because normally either none or just one of those events is held at all.

While considering whether this championship would fit my schedule, I found out that people, who had a published rating over 2500, as well as World and Olympic champions, receive personal invitations and special conditions. I was seduced by the offer and decided to take part. In addition to the above-mentioned contestants each federation could nominate a certain number of players, depending on how high-rated they were.

When I arrived on Batumi, the World Chess Championship was in the tie-break stage. We had to postpone our trip around the city with Alexandra Kosteniuk until the end of the rapid games. At first I was anxious to go, but then I got excited with the show and couldn’t stop watching! Here are some interesting expert opinions about the match.

While I was familiarizing myself with the city, two guys asked me to pose with them so they could take a picture. I doubt they knew who I was though. And here are some pics I took to give you a sense of the environment we were playing in:

A luxury hotel

View from my window

Fountains

A lighthouse and a wheel

Overall, I found most of my colleagues focused and very motivated. While I personally prefer classical chess to anything else, many of the participants were looking as concentrated as if the supreme chess crown was at stake. One well-known player, a friend of mine, said that she believes that rapid chess is the future of the game, and that hence she would like to win the event very much. Whenever I went out, most of the participants would stay in their rooms and prepare. I am not sure how and what they were preparing, given that one could find out in advance the pairings for just one game out of three and that many players were experimenting with openings in rapid chess, but that's the way it was.

The financial conditions were rather tough for the players. The prize fund was $100,000 ($59,000 for the rapid championship and $41,000 for blitz). Given that the field included 50 competitors, you can get an impression of how much an average participant would make. On a positive note, winning the championship gives great bragging rights, as well as earns one a real crown – what else does  a girl need?

The line-up included five former World Women’s Chess Champions (Gaprindashvili, Chiburdanidze, Zhu Chen, Stefanova, Kosteniuk) and most of the world’s best female chess players. A notable absentee was the reigning chess queen Hou Yifan. Being busy playing in a Chinese super tournament, she couldn’t come.

The rapid part of the tournament lasted 4 days: 3 rounds, 3 rounds, 3 rounds, 2 rounds. The time control was standard for such events – 25 minutes/game + 10s/move. You can find the final standings here. As usually, most of the games were very tense: mutual mistakes, amazing tactics, nerve-racking time troubles. Below I will offer you a selection of some interesting positions – positive examples and, using Mark Dvoretzky’s terminology, tragicomedies:

 

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Candidate master Peter Zhdanov's column at Pogonina.com

Few chess players have been hated upon during the World Chess Championship matches as much as Anand and Gelfand. With a little help from Garry Kasparov we have discovered that their confrontation had nothing to do with determining the strongest player in the world. And there we go. “The most boring match in the chess history”; “another dull draw”, “watching the grass grow in my garden is more exciting”; “a clash of the pensioners” – these are some of the epithets Anand and Gelfand have been awarded. But is everything so clear? Let’s address a few delicate and widely quoted issues regarding the match.

«They have low ratings; their tournament results suck; these players are not the best at all». The playing strength of a person depends on the motivation and the format. The struggle for the chess crown and for winning some tournament X are two different things. Gelfand has specifically mentioned that he is highly motivated and playing his best in the tournaments which are directly related to winning the supreme chess title.

A lot has been said about the financial side of the WCC. Let’s note that the match is considerably more lucrative for the participants than any other events. The winner received about $1,500,000 + potential prize money from the next match + probable endorsement offers and awards from the government of his country. And how much does a winner of a super tournament make? $50k? Best case scenario - $100k? It’s a different scale, do you agree? How can it be fixed? Ideally, by increasing the prize money and somehow integrating the tournaments into the candidate cycle. However, this is being done already, and deserves a separate article.

The legitimacy of the players is also unquestioned. It is obvious, like Gelfand has pointed out once, that the public is tired of watching 40+ year olds play. They want to see new faces. But who should be blamed for Magnus Carlsen’s unwillingness to participate in the cycle, no matter how many times FIDE has been trying to persuade him? Why have the top dogs according to the public vote – Aronian, Kramnik and Topalov – failed the expectations? Yes, hardly anyone was anticipating Boris to win, but he came on top in the World Cup and then in the Candidates Matches. Do we have the right to blame him? As to Anand, it is even more obvious. The Indian wizard has defended his title against such heavyweights as Kramnik and Topalov, so he is clearly a legend worthy of the chess crown.

«The Aronian-Kramnik match was much more exciting and innovative than Anand-Gelfand ». It came as a surprise for me, but many chess fans honestly don’t understand the difference between an exhibition match and a World Chess Championship event. In a friendly game one can experiment, enjoy himself and entertain the public, take risks. With the stakes being as high as they were at the WCC, the outcome of the match is the primary factor to consider.

«The player didn’t take risks. Where is their fighting spirit?». In my opinion, Anand’s and Gelfand’s credentials speak for themselves. If anything, they are amazing match players. And I don’t think that any of the amateurs has the right to patronizingly say that he knows best how and when they should be taking risks. Moreover, the short format (only 12 games) doesn’t support risk-taking.

«Sophia rules must be implemented! How dare they make short boring draws?”. It seems to me that the problem is deeper than it looks on the surface. Most spectators prefer decisive games to drawn ones. Everyone wants to see a winner. Not to mention unqualified fans who can only keep asking “So, who is winning, our guy or the other one?”. After every draw tension and exasperation are building up. People start talking about players not doing their job. Some are claiming that only the Sophia rules can save the show and make the players fight till the end. Nonetheless, I don’t think that many people would enjoy watching a dead drawn endgame being played out for another two hours just for the sake of reaching move 40. On the contrary, they would be even more displeased: “I have been watching this stuff for 5 hours straight, and it was still drawn!”. Silvio Danailov has mentioned on Twitter that Sophia rules are a must-have and referred to his son not understanding what was going on as supporting evidence. I would like to point out that strong IM Silvio should be one of the last people to complain about it: why not explain why the position is a draw to his child as opposed to telling him to consult the FIDE handbook?

 «The quality of the games was low; no new ideas have been introduced”. First of all, in classical chess there were hardly any blunders. Games #7 and #8 stand aside in this respect, but was there ever a WCC match without dramatic, inexplicable blunders? Secondly, I, an ordinary candidate master, was shocked by how consistently the players followed the notorious “first line” of the engines. Once again, I am falling back on my impressions, not statistical analysis, but it seems like there were not so many inaccuracies. I doubt there were many matches where the quality of the play was of a completely different, superior level.  Finally, I am not the one to evaluate the number of new openings ideas, but let’s just say that experts’ opinions on this are different, from “none” to “lots”.

«Who are we playing for?». A very instructive moment was when Evgeny Surov asked in a rather disturbed way why the players couldn’t play out the game to entertain the spectators. Boris was clearly displeased with the journalist’s tone. He snapped back and made one of the worst comments by saying that they are purely result-oriented and not playing for the crowd. On the one hand, such a statement expresses disrespect for all the fans of the game, and the wellbeing of such professionals as Gelfand himself is absolutely dependent on the public perception. No fans – no money. On the other hand, I can understand what the Challenger had in mind. He has dedicated all his life to chess, spent countless years climbing the Chess Olympus, demonstrated some incredible performances…only to have amateurs teach him how he should be playing. I guess he should have just waved the question off or made a joke. For example, he could have said that if we all realize that the position is a draw, then isn’t it better to save the viewers two hours to take a look at the Treatyakov gallery or just head home instead of making them waste the time by watching the endgame being played out? Nobody would have questioned this approach, and the chess community wouldn’t have been offended.

Summarizing, I would like to remind you that the world is not black and white. There are other stages between the best and the worst match in the history of chess. As far as I am concerned, the match between Anand and Gelfand was tense, rich in content, excellent in terms of organization. At the same time, somewhat not flashy enough, not sexy. However, it was not as unpretentious as many journalists and forum kibitzers are trying to make it look. What can I say? Haters gonna hate.

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Anand played the match terribly. However, obviously, Gelfand wasn’t destined to beat even such an opponent, the one who was significantly weakened. Anand performed in the match against Kramnik splendidly and so-so against Topalov in 2010, while his play nowadays is of a completely different level.

The tie-break was below any criticism. Gelfand should have won 3 games out of 4.

In the first game he, of course, had to play 28.Qd3 instead of capturing on h6.

I have played the endgame from the second game of this tie-break in the USSR Championship in 1979 against Geller. The very same endgame, but only mirrored, with White’s pawn on g4. The spectators were laughing! Efim Petrovich made like 10 moves and succumbed to a draw. It is unreal to lose that position with Black.

In the third game Gelfand clearly outplayed Anand. In the opening he could have taken on e4 and won a piece; in the endgame he had a winning position.

In the fourth game, in my opinion, Black could have won “with his hands” – just push the pawns.

Anand is lucky that Gelfand was the one who challenged him. If the Candidates Matches in Kazan were held using the 6-6-8 system (6 games in the ¼-final and ½-final, 8- in the final), Gelfand’s chances to make it to the WCC match would be minimal. Somebody else would have played against Anand and could have actually won. For example, Grischuk. Not to mention that Carlsen would have been playing.

I would like to repeat once again that this match has nothing to do with determining the world’s strongest chess player.

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Chessgames will be broadcasting live all 12 games of the Anand-Gelfand World Chess Championship, joined by our very special guest, WGM Natalia Pogonina. As if that's not enough, Natalia will be joined by WGM Jennifer Shahade during game #3 and then again for the exciting final rounds (#10-12). Premium members are encouraged to come join us during the live action at our Live Broadcast Page.

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