Viswanathan Anand

Chennai: Challenger Magnus Carlsen starts as favourite in the World Chess Championship match against reigning and five-time champion Viswanathan Anand, which begins here on Saturday.

Sources in the Anand camp confirmed that it was Anand’s pre-match strategy to reveal all the seconds in his team.

Now that everyone knows that Grandmasters Peter Leko and Krishnan Sasikiran are also assisting him, there is a probability that both Nimzo Indian Complex and Spanish Defence will be in the list of Anand’s openings.

But Anand has already employed both the systems regularly in his career. With white, both the players employ almost all the possibilities on move 1.

Anand and Carlsen are expected to employ completely different styles of play against each other in this match. Carlsen’s speciality is positions with strategic depth where his constant application of pressure allows him to succeed in equal positions. Anand showed a clear preference to play dynamic chess in his matches against Vladimir Kramnik and Boris Gelfand.

Keeping this in mind, Anand may be eager to employ dynamic defences even with black pieces in the very first game. But it is unlikely that Carlsen will allow the game to go out of his control in the initial stages. Hence a solid opening with strategic structure is expected in the first game of the match from Carlsen, with Anand countering with any of his dynamic defences.

The match carries a total prize fund of 14 crores, which will be divided at a ratio of 60:40 between the winner and the loser. The match being played in the opponent’s country, Carlsen will receive an additional 1 lakh Euros from the total prize fund.

Bookmakers have pegged Carlsen’s winning chances at 70 per cent, in line with the opinions of majority of the top Grandmasters. Among the living legends of the game, Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov and Vladimir Kramnik have all predicted better chances for Carlsen.

However, Kasparov has warned that, “it will not be a walk in the park for Carlsen”, and that Anand’s chances will increase significantly if he holds parity after six games.

Age difference and rating superiority are the two main factors, which favour the challenger. Carlsen is currently the top ranked player in the world with an Elo 2870, a position held unchallenged since July 2011. He is also only the second player ever to surpass the 2850 mark, a distinction achieved only by Garry Kasparov before him.

In comparison, Anand is currently ranked eighth in the world with an Elo rating of 2775. Anand’s peak was in mid-2011 when he was the highest rated player in the world at 2817.

This is the second time that the challenger has a superior rating than the defending champion. In 1972, American Bobby Fischer had a better ranking than Boris Spassky of Russia.

Also, this is the first world championship since 1921 where both the contestants are neither Soviet or Russian.

Carlsen was born in 1990 and will be turning 23 by the end of this month, an age when chess players reach their creative peak. In the modern era after the World War II, Mikhail Tal, Anatoly Karpov and Kasparov all became world champions in their early 20s.

In contrast, the 43-year-old Anand is one of the few players to be born in the 1960s and still remain in the top 100 in the world.

Anand and his previous challenger Boris Gelfand of Israel are the only players who above 40 but still figure in the top 10 rankings.