Who will win the 2013 world championship? Anand or Carlsen?

I believe Anand retains his title.

I am sure only of one thing, Anand will have to raise the level very high in accordance with the competitor, and we're in for a classic and historical World Chess Championship.

Anand will need to bring his a-game but you never know, a great champion like him know a little about playing under pressure, the closer it gets the more it willl favour Anand's experience.

but i think towards the end of match,fatigue will tell and carlsen will have upper hand.i think people are overrating anand exprience.carlsen isnot some guy from street.he surely will take advices from guys like kasparov and knows what to do.i remember fischer also didnt have any particular exprience before his mini match with Petrosian(who had reputation to be a fantastic match player)but won against him 3-1(+2=2) and also one year later again crushed him 6.5-2.5

Carlsen is the worst challenger Anand could have to face. Not only is Magnus higher rated than Vishy. But more importantly, he is a much harder worker OTB as well. He won't give Anand any of these 20-move "vacation day" draws like Gelfand did. Instead,Carlsen will grind him down each and every game. And Anand will collapse. Early.

Anand will win. Everyone else says Carlsen. So I just want to be a contrarian.

Carlsen has a 74% chance of winning because of his high rating vs. Anand has a 26% chance of winning based on their rating difference. I hope that Anand wins though. However, Anand is getting older, so he might not do that well. I don't think their rating difference account for their chances of winning, but this is how you use Elo ratings to estimate their chances. I don't think its accurate.

Anand has a better chance than 26% though, because as Vladimir Kramnik said, "in terms of play Anand is in no way weaker than Kasparov but he's simply a little lazy, relaxed and only focuses on matches. In the last 5–6 years he's made a qualitative leap that's made it possible to consider him one of the great chess players." Magnus is close to Kasparov's equal and I think his rating's higher than Kasparov's because of rating inflation.

Well, not being lazy at the board is a pretty fair part of one's chess skill set :D

To me Anand's title defenses don't make up for his very mediocre tournament results in the past few years -- in years like 2011/2012 I remember lots of +0 type results -- I know one time he drew all of his games in one of these, and just in general a lot of his results have a similar level of mediocrity. Yes, I would like him to perform well in things other than his championship match every 2 years (approximately) .

I have seen that as well, Elubas.

Could you imagine Kasparov, or Karpov, turning in such mediocre results while they held the crown?

Chess should be embarassed to call Anand it's Champion.

I wouldn't see Anand's "only" losing with a margin of three points in the match against Kasparov 18 years ago as some indication regarding his beating Carlsen today. More relevant is probably that Carlsen just is the clearly stronger player of the two now. It isn't just that Anand's tournament results have been worse than any other reigning World Champion's. He had a very hard time reaching 6-6 against the same Gelfand that Carlsen has scored four wins and one draw against in their last five games. Anand had 5.5-5.5 against Topalov when the latter avoided the repetition draw in the last game of their match, while Carlsen has kept lining up win after win against Topalov. It's also three years since Anand won a game against Carlsen, while Carlsen in these years have kept improving and recently won a couple of games quite easily against Anand.

Carlsen wins guaranteed.

You're right about what I wrote about the 1995 World Championship. It doesn't indicate he'll do well this year. Three points is a lot to lose by. So, I just removed that part. Again, I don't think that Anand's likely to win. I'll be happy if he does though.

The whole thing of match experience doesn't determine who wins the  championship. It's the same thing as playing in a tournament, except for it's against the same person. Anyway, I think the best case scenario that could happen for Anand is that they tie in the classic games, and Anand win the Rapid tiebreak. If it enters the Blitz tiebreak, Carlsen will win. Carlsen is good at blitz and Anand is good at rapid. For those of you who think Rapid is very similar to Blitz, it isn't.

Carlsen isn't bad at rapid either:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?tid=72927

Thanks for showing me that. I think they are pretty equal now. Vishy is declinining from his earlier status as a Rapid player, so maybe that isn't the best case scenario now.

The romantic in me wants Anand to hold on for 2 more years, the realist in me says otherwise. Vishy has to be one of the nicest people on the planet and a deserved World Champion but Carlsen's youth will win the day.

The king is dead, long live the king!

fide will win, people will forget what corrupt and incompetent bunch they are. the great winner in any case will be fide

Anand sure is a very sympathetic person, I don't think it's just a question of age deciding this time though. Anand has been a great player for a long time, but when he had his biggest lead on the rating list (six years ago) he had 59 points down to #13. On today's live rating list Carlsen has a bigger margin that that down to #2.

Already at 22 Carlsen has a relative position that is inferior only to Kasparov and Fischer at their peaks when close to 30 (since the first unofficial Elo ratings in the 1960s). It was first in the 1990s Kasparov reached a bigger lead than 60 points on the rating list, while Karpov never had it. Fischer had a bigger lead on two lists before retiring.

As evidenced by their ratings, Carlsen is better, thus, he has a better chance to win. I guess I'd put it at a 60-40.

Sigh** Only and if only  statistics could win the the match.

Yeah age is a huge disadvantage. Ask Kramnik.