You all should get watching the Aronian/Anand match right now

In a situation such as yesterday sometimes you have to hold your hands up and say 'fair enough, didn't see that coming, well played'. Especially when you fall into something that has been prepped and you're trying to refute it OTB. Aronian did that well, his interview was very magnaminous. Just like: 'yeah, got caught in a trap, didn't know it, now i know'

Well, Anand should start hiding his prep quickly before people think he's good again ;)

Off the top of my head Euwe and Tal were both 'lacking' the gigantic ego Kasparov feels is necessary to become world champion, maybe Smyslov and Spassky as well. Petrosian used massive paranoia to become champion and that would indicate his ego or self esteem was somewhat lacking. Anand is simply the most well adjusted champion since Euwe but he knows he's good.  Steinitz, Capablanca, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Fischer, Karpov and Kasparov in their different ways did have the 'correct' personality type though...some of them in spades!

Its one of the great things about Chess that such disparate characters could all be fantastic players and even today Carlsen doesn't give off the air of a man bent on destroying his opponents will in every game so I don't really buy into the huge ego requirement...

Very simple - 15 players (or any odd number) instead of 14; each player has 7 games as White, 7 as Black and one day off. But then there´d be arguments about whether it´s better to have your day off at the beginning or on the last day

Yeah... I'd much rather have my bye (rest day) two-thirds of the way through the tournament than have it after my last game is finished.

Ill take mine the day before my toughest match, go watch tomorrow´s opponent, stand behind him and make muffled snorting noises every now and then.

jesterville wrote:

...is there no other way, where all players would have gotten to play equal Black and White?

Very simple - 15 players (or any odd number) instead of 14; each player has 7 games as White, 7 as Black and one day off. But then there´d be arguments about whether it´s better to have your day off at the beginning or on the last day

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If having an odd number of players would level the playing field re Black & White pieces, why would they keep on inviting even numbers to Tournaments? In this case they could have had 13 or 15 to keep the play honest.

Anand vs Carlsen is going to be huge !

This was an amazing game! This analysis was on Chessbase. Awesome game.

this is my immortal game. just finished it

The Aronian Anand game posted above should be Anand's immortal, who else agrees?

Agree.

#123: in your variant on move 12 you play c5 after b4. Why not a5?

Let´s wait and see what he comes up with against Carlsen, maybe the Aronian game will only be his Evergreen ...

Does Houdini have an Immortal Game?

What do you mean? How could he have prepared for an entire game? 

He is the world champion for something.

Heh, you don't think they can prepare an entire game?  Of course not every individual move, but against every likely try by their opponent they can have a variation and ideas in mind, and use their general chess skill to fill in any gaps.  That is to say, you can't have a planned move for everything, but you don't need to.  It's not unlikely that Anand saw a great deal of the critical variations of this game years ago on a computer screen.

Well, what games are mortal, really?

The ones no one bothered to write down or remember