Last year, world champion Viswanathan Anand lost game seven of his world championship match to his challenger Boris Gelfand, an Israeli grandmaster, in a best-of-12 series. However, he rebounded to capture game eight in 17 moves, the shortest win in world championship history.
Anand was down 4-3 but his defeat of Gelfand in the eighth, brought the troubled ship back on an even keel. Anand went on to win the match and retain his title. Now with his new challenger, Norway’s Magnus Carlsen, Anand’s home country and Indians scattered throughout the universe, were urging him on to re-perform the Gelfand trick. But the problem is that Carlsen is an elegantly superior player to Gelfand and becomes dangerous as his opponent attempts to steal a game from him. Carlsen leads the world champion by a 6-3 margin, nine games having been completed from the 12-game series. Carlsen only needs another half point to clinch the title or a draw in the next three games. So although the match is not technically over, it is in a sense, over. Anand’s task seems insurmountable. Which brings us to the ever persistent and intriguing question: Is the match too short? Well, before the match began, I cannot recall listening to any complaints about the irregular nature of the match neither from the Indian side nor the Norwegian side. I assume everyone was satisfied.
Carlsen has been the number one player in the world almost continuously since January 2010. Only the world championship title eluded him. He qualified to play Anand following his victory in the Candidates final in March of this year in London. The match began with two tame draws, with each player testing the waters of his opponent. Two exciting draws followed and both Carlsen and Anand excelled at different times in the third and fourth games. Then came game five, and with that came the shift in Carlsen’s favour. The game lasted 58 moves and a little more than five-and-a-half hours. Anand, though playing
