interesting...I was thinking something along these lines this morning. One of the impressions I got from watching the WC match was that Carlsen often spent a lot less time on his clock than Anand. I may be wrong, but that was an impression I got. In one of the first games, maybe the first or second, Carlsen was moving almost immediately. And in some of the later games, where Anand blundered near the end, Anand was moving very quickly, as if he didn't recognize danger, and as if, especially, he thought he could move as fast as Carlsen.
What became clear in thinking about it this morning is that Carlsen has very well honed reflexes. He sees best moves because he has seen them before, played them before, figured them out before. He didn't need to calculate as much as Anand because he already had the reflexes, the calculations were already done and second nature. He's wasn't playing blitz with Anand, but he was knowing best moves very very quickly. Anand's Achilles heel was that he assumed that he could move as fast as Carlsen, when, in fact, he couldn't. Perhaps if Anand had taken the time he needed, perhaps he could have found more best moves. but he definitely needed more time than Carlsen to find them.
Carlsen's incredible experience showed in this game. Pre-game, people said Anand had more experience than Carlsen, and that would be in Anand's favour. I think the opposite was shown to be true; Carlsen's huge experience showed in this game; his prior experience of best moves. If anything about Anand showed in this game it is that Anand moved too quickly. Anand's ability to calculate shouldn't be questioned; what is remarkable is that Anand didn't recognize when to, and when not to calculate. He made some impulsive moves.
another piece I particularly liked from Anish Giri: (btw thank you for posting this sapientdust)
After the match we also saw the reason behind the smile on Magnus' face, which appeared after Anand has mentioned his seconds (see the video from the press-conference before the match). There was almost no use of Vishy's opening experts, as Magnus was jumping from sideline to a sideline, refusing to enter a single critical variation even at cost of his position (e.g. game 9).
in a way, what Giri writes contradicts what I wrote above, viz. Giri says that Carlsen's preparation anticipated Anand's accurately, while Anand's did not.
An interesting article by Anish Giri on his website about the World Championship Match and Carlsen. From the article:
Magnus also gets all the professionals mad: all those years of evolution of our game, Botvinnik, developing a whole system of preparation, Fischer, swallowing Russian books on openings, Timman, memorizing informants, Karpov with whole country behind him, Kasparov, with his team working daily like maniacs to find new ideas and directions in the opening, all that in vain, as Carlsen will get you out of your book on move 5 and the game will start from scratch. The new World Champion shows us that the game can be played very differently and if you are that good at it, even more successfully.