What are your predictions for the World Championship?

It's just 23 days to the awaited World Championship Match-up between Boris Gelfand of Israel against Vishy Anand of India. Both of them are exceptionally brilliant!

Though it was a shame that Magnus Carlsen withdrew...

What are your predictions?

I think Vishy Anand will retain the crown.

Anand will crush Gelfand. The match probably won't be interesting, unless you have a sadistic bent of mind.

Anand

Here's the official site

http://moscow2012.fide.com/en/

On the right hand side bar, one can find the statistics of Anand vs Gelfand.

BTW, both players share three alphabets

Anand Gelfand 

Easy win for Anand.

Noone will be chrushed, Gelfand is a strong player with a classical and fighting style; in a long match noboby would chrush him. And Anand is admittedly not in his best form (just two years ago he was almost undefeatable and #1 in the ranking, but during the last year he played rather uninspiringly). That said i still expect Anand (my favourite player) to win. But it will be a close match.

@bresando - While nobody can disagree that Gelfand is a strong player,he is something like 21st place in the world at 2727. Despite Anand's lackluster play recently, he is still #4 in the ratings at 2791.

Also, history shows that Anand tends to play "poorly" before his important matches, either to hide his preparation or other reason, then shows his best chess when the match is on. For example, examine his play before and during his matches vs Kramnik and Topalov.

While Gelfand may not be completely crushed, it will certainly be a mostly one-sided match, in my opinion.

Of course. That is why i'm saying that whilst nobody in the world can expect to "chrush" Gelfand (he is strong enough to dignitously fight back against everyone) Anand is the favourite.

Gelfand is experienced, has been in the top 5 in the past (if i remember correctly), has a solid classical style and a lot of fighting spirit (it's one of those "never give up players" who somehow manage create drawing chances in difficult positions). He is not some dude who is peaking  as #21 but never did anything notable in the past. He is a top player slightly past his best. This makes a lot of difference in my opinion. 2727 is a number which says a lot, but not everything.

regarding Anand's form, he is my favourite player and I would really like to buy the "he was too focused with the WC match to play well elsewhere" explanation. But this is just not true. Anand himself said in an interview that his poor form started a very long time before he started preparing for the match, and that he doesn't believe it's related to it.

Regarding Anand's rating, remember that it takes some time for a rating to decrease; more talling are the rating performances from the latest tournaments. Looking at this,you can see that he never performed anywhere near 2790 in a long time. He is staying in the 2750 range, dangerously close to Gelfand's rating...

I would really like Anand to show his peak  strenght in this match (the top form Anand of the recent past was simply frighteningly strong, his games being pure poetry), but i think it's more realistic to expect a close fight.

A boring, drawn out snorefest won ultimately by Anand.

Even if both Anand and Gelfand performed below their best form the last year the difference between the two as players is huge. Anand has won numerous top tournaments and been top five for 20 years. He hasn't lost against Gelfand in 19 years and is a player on a totally different level. The last time Gelfand won a tournament (i.e. not knockout) was in 2005, when he shared first with Volokitin in an event without 2700 opponents. Even if Anand hasn't won a tournament in four years he has several second place finishes while it often has been difficult for Gelfand to avoid last place. If Anand loses to Gelfand it would be the by far biggest sensation ever in a title match, when Euwe and Kramnik won the title they were both top three level, and Kramnik was the only player to always score good results against Kasparov.

So they couldn't find funding for Kasparov-Shirov but they find funding for Anand-Gelfand

Funny world

Also interesting is Garry Kasparov's opinion on it:

"The uniqueness of the forthcoming match, as I see it, is in the fact that for the first time in the modern World Chess Championships history the match between the legitimate world champion and a legitimate candidate won’t be a fight for the title of the strongest chess player of the world"

So true, haha

Is it possible to watch the game live any way online?

It will of course be possible. Both on the dedicated website (seemingly with commentary provided by svidler!) and in dozens of places around the web.

I suspect it might turn out to be closer than some people think. I'd still go for Anand if I have to call it one way or the other, but world class GMs don't get 'crushed' by anyone and I will be disappointed if Gelfand doesn't at least put up a good fight. There's no reason why he shouldn't.

Will it be free?

I think so. For sure it will be broadcasted for free in many places.

Right. Thinking about it there are other examples, for example at the time only a few believed that Alekhine had a chance against Capablanca. 

im picking Boris. nothin like a underdog to pull one out of the bag.