Anand Blitz Fail

LOL just found this. XD

Mind blowing. I said d6 right away! lol

You are confused over the meaning of the word "fail".

Okay impressive he won, but seriously!?!

 You are being silly. Do you have any idea how many variations he may have been calculating in that time period and along with that, deciding how he wanted the game to proceed. I once saw a GM take 20 minutes on move 4 of a classical event against a player 600 points lower. I asked a Master level friend of mine what he was thinking since even I knew a standard book move and he replied, 'probably he was thinking if he wanted to get into a line that the 2000 FIDE player may have prepared 15-20 moves out or to find out if hs opponent can really play chess'. That struck me as being very plausible, a lot better than any explanation I could come up with. So to say that Anand, who is among the greatest blitz and certainly rapid chess players in chess history, is somehow 'failing' is pretty far fetched. I wish I could fail so well given how he then truly blitzes out moves after that - lol.

--Vic.

Woah.

I didn't mean any disrespect by using the phrase 'being silly' but it did just strike me as not really a valid criticism that of course he should just play d6 as in 'I said d6 right away'. So what - did you see all the rest of the moves he played at blitz speed right away as well ? I didn't - I doubt you did, either.

But again, I agree it is fascinating that he took so long and even Daniel King and Maurice Ashley were perplexed. What I am impressed by is how confident GM Smirin is and the 'smirk' on his face during that 1 min 43 sec think. Of course it disappeared didn't it. ;>

Haha! No I gotcha. But that's unheard of. No getting around it!

It is not that surprising... The point of your time is to use it

Such a fail he got a win when he needed a draw!

Okay. Did you hear the GM's commentating!? They were freaking out. This is the opening. A lot of times they spend way less when they have full time control.

Goodness guys! ignore the end result! He spend 1:43 on move 4 of the freaking petroff.

They freaked out when he 'sacrificed' his queen when the pawn was pinned because of back rank issues.

Guaranteed it was because he only needed a draw. He was thinking about the safest line.

Well he chose it. Petroff is soooooo drawy..... Come one. I mean come on. IT's the petroff.

I dont know. But how could you play the petroff and not have that move decided?

I remember a story of Anand once spending something like 20 minutes on his first move, after the game when asked why he did it he claimed he was trying to remember the variations the player used. Maybe it's something similar here?

According to Andrew Soltis in Transpo Tricks in Chess, the story here is that Anand had then never before seen 4. Nxe5 in this Petroff line. (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. d4 Nxe4 4. Nxe5, where Anand instead expected 4. Bd3.) As a result, he spent almost 2 minutes trying to refute the move, unaware that it was book.

I don't know how likely it is that Anand had this hole in his theory at the time, but if you thought you knew your theory cold and your opponent deviates on move 4, the reaction is quite understandable.

But the Petroff is prety standard. I mean Vishy even uses it often, at move 4 there aren't even that many posibilties! I guess he just started thinking and couldn't bring himself to do it. XD

Another over use of the word "fail" and not even used correctly.  Why not just throw in "epic"...'owned'...'pwned'

HAHA that was a fail.