Moscow: The dynamic play and defence of Viswanathan Anand and Boris Gelfand’s opening surprises and principled play with white pieces have shaped the ongoing World Chess Championship, here.

The scores being tied at 5–5, more than their perceived strengths and weaknesses, nerves hold the key.

In matches, the psychological edge always rests with the player who plays active chess seemingly not bothering about the consequences. Anand’s consistent dynamic play gave him an opportunity to score in the third game, and made his opponent to go wrong in the eighth game.

Anand is regarded as one of the best defenders ever in the history of chess. This meet also is no different.

Defence in chess is not about erecting barriers and stopping the opponent. Different dimensions as psychology, patience, pressure, handling the clock and opponent’s strengths and weaknesses have to be judged properly in choosing the correct form of defence.

In the first game, Anand sensed correctly about the impending danger and strengthened his position ensuring parity even before his opponent could come up with threats.

In the ninth game, playing on psychology and opponent’s style, he provoked Gelfand into action when faced with white’s unpleasantly dynamic possibilities. But he replied with a prepared queen sacrifice and erecting a ‘fortress’, an important defensive technique.

Gelfand’s opening choices and preparedness seem to be his main strengths. With the Grunfeld, Sicilian Sveshnikov and finally the unorthodox 5…e5 in the 10th game, he has consistently surprised his opponent in openings. Anand has won games with black pieces against both Vladimir Kramnik and Vaselin Topalov in the World Championship matches of 2008 and 2010.

This seems to have been consciously considered by Gelfand when determining his playing style, thus giving minimal advantages with white resulting in solid positions, and a win in the seventh game.

On the negative side, Anand seemed to be missing his cue in crucial transition periods, either when he is under pressure defending a position, or when finding critical continuations to exploit his advantage.

The seventh game was a glaring example of the former, while the third and 10th games were examples of the latter. In chess terms, these are called as the turning points. The example of the third game was highlighted specifically by Garry Kasparov when he commented on Anand’s play.

Gelfand seemed to be making more tactical errors in neutral positions, as witnessed in the third game and the eighth game. Of course, the latter falls into the category of a major blunder, which handed the game over to Anand in a platter. In the third game, he failed to spot a simple tactic leading to equality and followed up with consistent tactical errors, which almost cost him the game.