Viswanathan Anand

Chennai: The newly-crowned Magnus Carlsen reminds one of the legendary Jose Raul Capablanca.

Carlsen’s style is similar to the legendary Cuban, deceptively simple and clear. His fearless chess in Chennai has promised one thing. That he will not relinquish the world crown, he won on Friday that easily.

For Indian chess lovers though, Viswanathan Anand’s abject capitulation was something they never thought of. They are hoping for a revival, expecting the legend to make a comeback, next year.

Now let’s talk about the 10 games.

The first game ended prematurely, while the second was rendered uneventful, with a flurry of pieces getting exchanged too soon. Game 3 was the first significant game of the match.

Anand, playing black, deployed his pieces beautifully and at one point managed to push white queen to the most innocuous square “h1”.

Anand could have coolly gobbled up the pawn on “b2” on his 29th move which would have given him a decisive advantage. In the hindsight, one may say that this game could have changed the course, liberating Anand of his feared long drawn dry battle. However, it was not to be and Magnus was allowed to escape!

And then the most dramatic game of the championship, where both the players flirted with danger. Magnus’ choice of gobbling the ‘poisoned’ pawn on a2, bordered on insanity.

That it managed to go out unscathed is another story. But this game is also a pointer of what to expect from this new generation world champions.

Like Twenty-20 cricket, which redefined the principles of batting, these young players are not afraid of trespassing inside the domain of their opponents and try something which would have been considered blasphemous, till sometime back.

In Game 5, there were some inexplicable moves like 13)….Bc7.

Straight after the opening, Anand was pushed to passivity and his pieces were discordant and bishop was placed on e8 square, guarding vital f7, from invasion of white’s rooks.

The lone rook operating on the fifth rank did not have any targets.

Anand pulled on and somewhere between the 34th move and 42nd move, managed to enter into a lost endgame position. It goes without saying that he missed a draw during this phase.

“When it rains, it pours” Anand had said on Friday after Carlsen won the world title. The five-time world champion was spot-on as it poured on the very next game. Another depressing game, and an equally depressing loss in a long drawn endgame.

The writing on the wall was never so glaring. After a draw on the eighth, Anand showed great promise in game 9. But Carlsen went on defending and counter-attacked with his customary coolness and elegance.

There could have been certain leading lines which could have promised a win for Anand, but the mindset that he was pushed into, by now, in this match made him miss a very simple continuation and the third loss.

The ninth and the 10th game were mere formalities.

Still Carlsen went for the full point in the 10th game — the final game of this championship. He left the board only when both the kings were stripped of all the clothing!

The match may not have lived up to the expectations of the connoisseurs, it may have lacked the spark such clashes evoke, and there were too many mistakes — some of them juvenile.

Still, Carlsen is a deserving champion and it was his sheer force and personality, which rendered the great Anand, a shadow of what he used to be.

Sad, but it’s true.