Kramnik v Anand - Nearly There!

There are now less than 24 hours until the start of the World Chess Championship match between Vishy Anand and Vladimir Kramnik.  Both players appeared relaxed at the opening press conference and said they were eager to get the match under way after months of hard work and preparation.

Vishy Anand confirmed that his seconds are Peter Heine Neilsen (Denmark), Rustam Kasimdzhanov (Uzbekistan), Radoslav Wojtaszek (Poland) and Surya Shekhar Ganguly (India).  He was asked directly if Magnus Carlsen was helping him for the match, but he dodged the question!  It seems likely that Magnus has had some sort of input into Vishy's match preparations!

Kramnik was asked if he expected any off-the-board incidents as occurred before in his match with Veselin Topalov.  Kramnik felt that it was very unlikely that there would be any repeat of such happenings.  Both Kramnik and Anand were unfailingly polite to one another, both saying that the only thing that their opponent did to annoy them was play such good chess!

So, the big match starts on Tuesday 14th October at 3pm local time in Germany and Chess.com will be broadcasting the game live as the lead news item.  As noted previously, the official organisers have insisted on a half-hour delay on the broadcast of moves to promote their own coverage (only the official site is completely 'live'), so the first moves should come through at about 3:30pm local time.

Pictures from Foidos.