Is The Slav Solid?

     Well, of course it is.  However, the last two days we discussed "Is the Grunfeld solid" and "Is the Catalan solid" and since Game 3 featured the Slav I wanted to keep with the theme.
     Does anyone have any statistics for the Slav in World Championship matches?
Do you think it was smart for Anand to play after that proverbial debacle in
Game 1?  Do you think Anand should continue to play it as black for the
remainder of the tournament? 
     Does anyone think we will see any e4 games or will the d4 trend continue?
Did Topalov have winning chances today or was it a draw all the way?  Will
Anand play hard for the win as white or will he play safe?
    

Zank, aren't you overdoing the "is the xxxxx defence solid?" stuff? I mean, come on, the Slav was played in a number of WCC matches...

Crazyc,

Yes, that comment was meant to be tongue in cheek.  However, I still am
curious as to the statistics during World Championship play like the stats
posted in the Grunfeld discussion.  Ciao.

I'd just love to see a "Is the Grob Solid?" thread in a few days, lol

Rooperi,

How cool would that be if someone opened with the Grob and won?

Tomorrow Anand is going to win with the Nimzo-Larsen Attack!

Well, I wonder about about stuff like that.

If one party prepares a dubious!? line, and there is almost zero probability that the other side has any preparation on this, would this be so bad? It's not always easy to refute stuff over the board.

In 1918 a very strong Rubinstein got taken apart by the Budapest, 2 losses and a draw against weaker opposition. I'm just saying....

Would a game like that come down to tactics or positional play?  It would be
a legendary game, that's for sure.

Is Ruy Lopez? Is Nimzo-Indian solid?Is KID solid? You forgot to ask is 1E4 solid.And hey is 1D4 solid? Dont forget to ask if castling is solid.Anyone knows if deleloping knigt on F3 is solid.Maybe you wanna know if promoting is solid.Are you solid??My friend,use some big database and stop boring us with that.

Dubious.  A more accurate display of scorn would go 'is this joke solid?'

I have the same feeling. I think this is good news for Anand. he needs to keep it simple as black and wait for Topalov to go crazy. if he doesnt go nuts, the its just going to be a lot of easy draws from the black pieces. Anand tried to prove a point in the first game and it backfired.

I think Anand chose the opening (rather than Topalov) and to some extent suprised Topalov. I believe Kramnik also used that same line against Topalov in one of their games. If Topalov would have played Kramnik again he would have been prepared for that but maybe he didn't expect Anand to use that kind of passive defence as it has not really been his style recently.

Also, I believe that if black player would have been just some 2600 patzer instead of Anand Topalov would have gotten much more pressure.

I am really curious as to what will be played tomorrow.

I don't understand. I mean, a4 is the absolute main line on move 5 here; has been probably 100 years or more and still seems to be. Sure white has other moves but a4 is the only one played on regular basis. Apparently theory doesn't consider the gambit 5. e4 b5 too promissing.

What's the story where Karpov as white was playing one of the Polgar sisters (forgot which one) and Putin was there to make the first move as is done sometimes in top level games.  So Putin plays for Karpov 1.g4, so Karpov says no, no, no, and puts it back.  Putin says something like "I'm Putin, and this is the move" and plays 1.g4 again so that was Karpov's first move lol.

By the way he won.  Some of these "dubious" openings aren't as bad as some would have you think... at least not yet on move 1.  Obviously there are superior first moves, but I think the worst white could do with his first move is simply give up his opening advantage and let black equalize immediately.

I think they will persist with  d4!

The slav is very solid. It strengthens the d5 pawn and is a very common line.