breaking news Carlsens blunders away a winning position

Help me out here: it is just "psychological" if it's Naka throwing games to Carlsen but if it's Anand, he's a has-been/past-his-prime old man with zero chances and doesn't even belong in the same room with Carlsen?  (not my thought on this but what's implied in every thread here .... )

Well duh. Naka's still only 26. Anand is 44. That's like double; he's ancient 

I don't frequent the forums around here very often so I can't comment on what the general consensus here is, but I would think winning the Candidates Tournament would convince everyone that Anand can at least still compete with the big boys.

Whether or not he has a complex with Magnus isn't as clear to me. He did implode once or twice in the match, but whether that can be attributed to psychology, fatigue, or just simply Murphy's Law is unclear in a sample size that small. With Hikaru, his complete and utter inability to win (or even draw!) games in which he has had dominant advantages in the opening and middlegame time and time again against Carlsen and specifically Carlsen... I find it hard to believe all that is just coincidence. With Vishy, I feel that he plays about as well as anyone can against Magnus and neither suffers from psychological issues nor age, (though his play is a bit less inspiring these days in GM Kudrin's opinion) and simply makes mistakes occasionally like any other human.

EDIT: SocialPanda wrote:

Yes, true. The point is, Naka's record against Carlsen is BAAAAAAD. Like "The Last Airbender" bad. It just ain't pretty.

I know, right? That's the 1st thing I thought about.

So, that explains why Magnus Carlsen is the highest rated player in the world and is the reigning World Chess Champion!

Do you think that Nakamura play as a young player, and Carlsen more like and older one? I think that young strong players are very good in the first 20 moves, and later loses some momentum, while Magnus are not considered to be a supergood starter (but he probably is better now than a couple of years ago), but has a reputation for being able to get the pieces into very fine places from move 25 to 40. 

When Magnus lost for Caruana, it was an early blow, he never got to the late middlegame where he has the edge.

Too much concentration and stress . This is the WORLD Champion contest. How many times do we blunder at chess play. Why today my Knight could have taken  my opponents queen but  didnt  These are SERIOUS players. Their whole reputation is on the line. Its authentis not rigged.  Carlsen is totally focused on the END result doesnt mind how many pieces will be lost in  the process

Do you mean that 5d5 was weak? I am not familiar with this opening.

I am very sceptic to move 7 a5 and move 8 a4, which I believe was tempoloosing, and I dont think Caruana ever did recover from those tempoweak moves.

Are those moves a distaster on the GM-level? Can a GM play like that with serious winningplans?

Enlighten me, I really dont understand chess on masterlevel. I can be mistaken in this issue.

And the pawn he used to take the pawn on move 6 went on to Queen.

Coincidence? You decide...

Not that tragic, I think. His reaction with ...a5 was the proper one, while Carlsen was the one to play the real novelty: 8.Be3.

Initially I am not impressed, I think Caruana too... and my Stockfish scorns it as easy equality for Black after 8...Ng4.

Yet, it seems that going out of book THAT early against Magnus while being a pawn down is a very bad idea: Chances that he will outplay you in practical chess and keep the material are great, and this is precisely what happened to Fabiano.

Ok, he could play it safe by 5...cd4 6.cd4 d5, or even 5...Qc7, but you can hardly blame him for playing more actively. It could work just fine against most of the opposition- but not Magnus.

Is really 8.Be3 home cooking? Hard to tell, I guess not. But it doesn't really matter- the sooner Carlsen gets out of book, the better for him.

 I think that events in the days following the Karjakin game add weight to the contention that this thread first proposed: Carlsen blundered away a winning position.In my humble opinion ,this is why he went on to lose his next 2 games , something he hadn't done for 4 years.

Whether people like it or not it seems that with the benefit of hindsight we can now see more clearly that his play against Karjakin affected him quite a lot . Magnus knew at the time that he should have beaten Karjakin and it took him a few days to get over it.

BREAKING NEWS!!! I just stopped back in to see how this thread was going. 

What do you make of all the latest developments?

Can someone post the tournament standings so far? Thanks!

I predict Carlsen will win this one. Maybe by about 1 point.