WOW - Carlsen over Aronian

Gutsy to turn down the draw offer.

Has anyone counted how many times Shahade has pouted or brushed her hair?

yes declining the draw offer and playing so good, really raised magnus in my eyes. he gets a lot of respect.

shame i got to tired and couldnt follow the game anymore, really nicely played.

man i also really like aronian at first, and his ideas they were beautiful. but how he then refused to resign destroyed everything then

Nah, pure class by both players.  They played it out.  All I can think of is wow.

Yeah, no problem at all on Aronian playing on for another 10 minutes or so. Hats off to both players.

Carlsen sends a clear message to Anand, as if it wasn't already clear, that Anand is going to have the hardest match of his life, and he'll be fighting for every half point.

It was a fun game to watch.

She likes to wiggle from side to side whenever what she just said makes her happy.

Anand is going to take a terrible pasting.  After the Gelfand match, he should have given  serious consideration to retirement.

Carlsen never stops fighting.  He can play any postion.  He can play any opening with ease and as long as the position is playable, he simply outplays his opponent and wins.  This means its really hard to prepare for him, because you don't what he will play. 

Anand could barely handle Gelfand and was lucky to win.  Think of what Carlsen is going to do him.

Shahade was a little quirky but I still liked the commentary.  I saw others complaining but it was much better than the commentary here.  They even missed the end of the game here.

I think it was a bit gutsy, after all Carlsen had little time on the clock and had a certain first place by just accepting the draw offer. As for Aronian maybe forcing a playoff by drawing, that was quite far fetched at the time. For Nakamura the question was mainly if Kamsky would convert his advantage or if Nakamura would save the draw, it never looked as if Nakamura was going to win that game.

According to the reports Aronian offered draw at the 38th move, when Carlsen was down to a couple of minutes and engines evaluated the position as 0.00 only if Carlsen played the best move. I think many would have settled with a draw there and secured first place.

Magnus is a really sensible player: he always performs up to the demands of any position, so that one could wonder if any serious challenger will show up in the near future!

technodancevsky i think we should first wait till the end of the wc match.

That's correct.

It's hard to say.  He had a pretty hard match against Kasparov. 

I thought the commentary by Seirawan and Shahade was top notch.  It was a good idea to have Ashley looking at a computer and Shahade and Seirawan looking at it from a human perspective. 

I thought Shahade did great and didn't notice if she brushed her hair.  She did seem cheerful, positive, and genuinely excited about the event.    Which I think considerably raises the bar for commentators rather than lowers it.   

Most important, I can definitely say that having a female who is good at chess in the mix definitely raised interest in the event for my girls ages 7 and 9.

I think people forget how much young girls tend avoid playing a "boys" game.  Just like boys avoid playing a "girls" game.   As every parent must know this is huge.   It's very important for young girls that we have women commentating. 

Polgar did a great job at the FIDE World Cup too.

You should know that around move 25 Carlsen only had 25 minutes against more than 60 of Aronians.

Yeah, I tried to list the times at important points in the game comments.  Move 20 was Carlsen 26 min, Aronian 1 hour, 6 min's.  By move 35 it was Carlsen 2 min, Aronian 19. It was awesome to watch, and I agree, the commentators were fantastic.  Almost all of the variations in the PGN above are their variations, I was just trying to copy them while I was watching the game.

I followed the game. It's not the best by Aronian. You must see the psychology behind it. He was pressured to win, a draw will not be any good.

Magnus is comfortable with a draw.

Let's compare it to soccer. Team A and B play their last game. If team A wins by at least 2 goals, they make the playoff (Chess: Armageddon). If not, team A is eliminated.

The score is 1-0 for team A with 15 minutes to go. Team A plays full attack leaving a defender and GK. Eventually Team A lost 1-2. Nothing is to be regretted. 1-0 or 1-2 will put team A in the same position: Eliminated.

Same in Baseball. The call is 3-2 and 2 outs. What should the batter do? Swing or not to Swing.