does anand go down as the greatest player of all time

This little pampered kid is sucks. Carlsen was extremely lucky to win this championship it will not happen again. 

The only one with any chance of beating Carlsen is Caruana. I don't see anyone in the top 10 right now standing a chance.

No Anand is not the greates player of all time.

No his career is not winding down.

That is awesome picture, hehe

So Carlsen and Anand are patzers because they missed it? I suppose that you are the ultimate judge of what is an "unforgivable" blunder (now that sounds like Christian terminology!), right? Go back to posting your asinine puzzles to feel good about yourself.

Oh wait, trolls shouldn't be fed.

I have to agree here.  I've been following HinduHamburgers games since he started at chess.com.  I think each game contributes to opening and strategic theory.  I'm hoping he publishes "HinduHamburger: My best Games of Chess" soon.

lol

Butthurt Anand/Indian fan spotted.

I kinda agree with him & Carlsen being lucky.  My theory is Anand was like "Wow...thats a lot of money....sure I'll show up"....so thats what he did.  I dont think those games are Anands better games. 

I like this game, of Kasparov vs Anand in the french: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1018318.  It was only a draw but I thought the game was pretty amazing game.  

"one of the" greatest.

"But using your own standard, if Kramnik were to start beating Anand in their dotage, you would place Kramnik ahead of Anand"

No, as I wrote, comparing the seven-eight most important criteria I see Anand as ahead of Kramnik in all of them. Anand did much better in qualifications for title matches, the World Championships both played, unified World Championships, world ranking, rating, best player of the year awards, match results, titles in Linares and Wijk, etc. If Anand's current +10-ish head to head score in classical+rapid during their prime decades would be reversed in their "old age" by Kramnik I wouldn't rank him as greater just because one of all those criteria now was in Kramnik's favour.

"It looked like Anand (who Kasparov crushed and is a poor old man now) gave Carlsen a pretty rough time"

Carlsen is 8-1 against Anand over the last four years, and during most of that time Anand was World Champion. Kasparov had great results against Anand when the latter was far from his peak, but in all his 4-1 in their title match 20 years ago reminded a bit of Carlsen's 3-0 and 3-1 in two shorter matches.

Anand's record is 10-7 with 69 draws in classical chess. If you include rapid and exhibition games, the record is 26-19 with 122 draws. (Based on chessgames.com's statistics: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?yearcomp=exactly&year=&playercomp=either&pid=12088&player=&pid2=12295&player2=&movescomp=exactly&moves=&opening=&eco=&result= ) That's not +10ish. And when you consider the huge number of draws, it's fair to say that they are very nearly equal in head-to-head play.

Btw, I haven't double checked this, but I think Kramnik led Anand in the personal head-to-head match up going into the 2008 World championship. It would take some digging to be sure of this though. When Kramnik was in his prime, he was second only to Kasparov in highest rating of all time.

Wikipedia gives Anand as +10 in classical + rapid, but these numbers may not be entirely correct, and doesn't include exhibition games, don't know if they should be counted the same way as games played in some sort of competition:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_games_between_Anand_and_Kramnik

Definitely Anand is one of the greatest. Also will always be remembered as the one who put India on the modern chess map, so to say. First big hero from India was the player who invented the Indian move ...Nf6 in response to 1 d4.

it was an easy tactic, like a 1600 rated tactics trainer problem and they both missed it during a world championship match.  that disqualifies either of them from being considered the best ever.

Petrosian had blundered his Queen in one move.

Kramnik blundered mate in one.

Spassky has blundered a piece is three different instances.

Anand has blundered a piece as early as move six.

Chigorin was effectively self-mated in one move.

Karpov has blundered a trivial fork in one move.

Kasparov blundered a piece against Karpov.

Fischer blundered a rook against Najdorf.

And the list goes on.

The only persons who don't blunder, are the critics in this thread, as well as other analogous ones. This is natural: Idiots are immune to blunders.