jchap
Member
ChessGAF (is there such a thing?): The 2014 world chess championship kicks off tomorrow in Sochi Russia! The world chess championship has a prestigious lineage dating back unofficially to La Bourdonnais in the early 1800s. Greats such as Paul Morphy (mid 1800s) followed before the first official world champion Wilhelm Steinitz was crowned in 1866 (after Morphy's premature death). Since then we have had only 16 world champions, the latest of which is 23 year old Magnus Carlsen who will be playing the 15th world champion Viswanathan Anand in a rematch of last year's changing of the guard.
vs
The match will take place with classical time control (2 hours for the first 40 moves with one hour added after move 40 and 15 minutes added after move 60 with 15 second increment thereafter) and with a format where a win is worth 1 point and a draw is worth half a point. The first one to 6.5 points is the victor.
Most did not give Anand a chance of making it back to the championship after last year's convincing defeat but he proved his critics wrong by cruising to victory at the Candidates tournament. Since the Candidates he has continued to produce strong results as evidenced by his win at the Bilbao Masters a few months ago.
Carlsen meanwhile has had a great year for anyone except Carlsen. He won in Zurich to kick off the year and then won the rapid and blitz world championships in Dubai. In his last two events before the world championship match he finished second at his home tournament in Norway and in the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis. His current rating of 2863 is comfortably the highest in the world and is more than 70 points clear of Anand (currently 6th in the world). This rating disparity should mean that Carlsen is more than a 4:1 favorite to retain the title but from their recent results, the match could be more competitive than that.
We no doubt will see some interesting games. I always find it amazing to watch two highly prepared masters duke it out like this.
The match will take place with classical time control (2 hours for the first 40 moves with one hour added after move 40 and 15 minutes added after move 60 with 15 second increment thereafter) and with a format where a win is worth 1 point and a draw is worth half a point. The first one to 6.5 points is the victor.
Most did not give Anand a chance of making it back to the championship after last year's convincing defeat but he proved his critics wrong by cruising to victory at the Candidates tournament. Since the Candidates he has continued to produce strong results as evidenced by his win at the Bilbao Masters a few months ago.
Carlsen meanwhile has had a great year for anyone except Carlsen. He won in Zurich to kick off the year and then won the rapid and blitz world championships in Dubai. In his last two events before the world championship match he finished second at his home tournament in Norway and in the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis. His current rating of 2863 is comfortably the highest in the world and is more than 70 points clear of Anand (currently 6th in the world). This rating disparity should mean that Carlsen is more than a 4:1 favorite to retain the title but from their recent results, the match could be more competitive than that.
We no doubt will see some interesting games. I always find it amazing to watch two highly prepared masters duke it out like this.
