With a year and a half of chess playing experience I thought I ought to comment on the recent World Chess Championship between Anand and Gelfan. It might be a better idea to make a comedy chess video or possibly a comedy video about ancient philosophers and cosmologies that failed to become revered in the course of time-perhaps instead of the Parthenon there was a shack in which a philosopher named Pithynous conjectured that the Universe was made of lime jello, firewater and tonic?
Anand has the #4 technical world ranking and Gelfan the 20th, yet Gelfan has a better record against Anand mono y mono playing white (20 to 15). The showdown in Moscow was a thriller-especially game 8.
For Anand one the chess championship and its something of a paradox since the Grunfeld defense was in play and Anand made the shortest work in making a victory (in game 8) that had ever occurred in a World Chess Championship Game- in just 17 moves.
I was somewhat fascinated by Anand's work. I have used a somewhat similar opening in creating something like an inverse 'v' with a two-sided chain of pawns and found that it works reasonably well against my chess computer program.
My use of the method breaks down there of course without the combination traps, broken field motions of teams of pieces and the clouds move around the mountain swirls that one finds in advanced tactics.
The obvious efforts by black are to attack with knights leaping over the defense line or to attack with a queen before its fully closed on one side or the other. This formation is very hard to get through for black and is useful for attack by white. Anand actually trapped Gelfan's queen back in H1 (all the squares have a unique number code for identification)-that is the extreme right home side for white.
Chess is a lot of fun to learn. Anand was able to see the situation that Gelfan's Queen was in and moved his own queen to a spot that along with three other pieces in places that could take Gelfan's Queen left the black queen nowhere to go so Gelfan resigned.
I have noticed that concentration on particular pieces, moves or one's own offense can create blind spots on the board-one doesn't 'see' obvious opposition force dangers before one moves. The good chess players not only see those potential pitfalls, they can note the relationships of several pieces simultaneously and move them in such a way that they have an advantage.
Anand had a similar victory against Kasparov in 2010 I believe it was. They were playing a 'blitz' match where one has to work against a timer (something like a 24 second clock in basketball) and Kasparov had a brilliant overall lead playing black. Yet when attacking Anand he overlooked a pitfall and virtually gave the victory to Anand. That sort of thing could be just luck for Anand, yet when it recurs against different opponents one must suspect that Anand simply brings out the worst in his opposition now and then-can't imagine how.
The chess match should have been covered by E.S.P.N. radio-it's as good as the Tour de France when Lance Armstrong was winning seven titles. Anand just one his third (Kasparov one 13 World Chess Championship titles I seem to recall).
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