Mother Nature puts a whammy on world championship match.
AS IS typical with all high-stake chess events, especially the world chess championship matches, the pre-match mind games usually start well before the first move is played.
This year’s world championship match between defending champion Viswanathan Anand and challenger Veselin Topalov is no different. The mind games started months ago when both parties were negotiating the terms for this match.
It was to be expected that both sides would want the best conditions for their players without acceding any concession to their rival. Nevertheless at the end of the day, they would have to agree on a common ground on which the match could proceed.
Bulgarian Veselin Topalov (left) is an enterprising player and enjoys a slight edge over defending champion, Indian grandmaster Viswanathan Anand.
That, of course, would have been settled long ago. Today, we are scheduled to see the start of the first game of the match in Sofia, Bulgaria, but will we? As I write this story earlier this week, there is a big question mark over this happening.
Even the best man-made plans can be torn asunder by the unpredictability of Mother Nature and as we all know, for much of the past 10 days or so, Europe has been affected by an event happening on the fringe of that continent.
Who would have expected that a volcanic eruption on Iceland could have affected air travel everywhere on the globe? Although travel within Asia, Australia, Africa and the Americas are generally unaffected, tens of thousands of flights within, in and out of Europe have been cancelled.
Air passengers are stranded everywhere and even the alternative land travel is pretty much choked up.
It’s a chaotic situation that is affecting even chess. Anand, who is based in Spain, has suddenly discovered that Mother Nature, aided unwittingly by the European Union, has no respect for world champions. His flight from Madrid took him to Frankfurt but on landing there, his contingent was told that the airport was closing and the connecting flight to Sofia had been cancelled.
This is not the best news for anyone who is directly involved in the high-stake world championship match. At the every worst, it will throw the player’s psychological preparation out of whack. We shall not know how much Anand has been affected until he sits down to face Topalov.
I’m sure to a lesser degree Topalov is also affected. However, he has comfortably settled into Sofia for several weeks now and his preparations continue uninterrupted. Whatever happens to the weather, every free day in Sofia is an opportunity for him to rest and psyche himself up for the match.
So the pressure is mostly on Anand. When I wrote this story earlier this week, I understood that the world champion had finalised plans to travel overland into Bulgaria.
He could have arrived in Sofia by Wednesday. Travel fatigue could have disrupted his preparations. Would one or two days be enough for him to recover his frame of mind?
Both Anand and the All India Chess Federation have made requests to the World Chess Federation and the match organisers from the Bulgarian Chess Federation to delay the start of the match for three days. This was while Anand was still stuck in Frankfurt.
To the majority of chess players worldwide, the request was not unreasonable. Although chess players are waiting for the match to start, they want both players to come to the match fully prepared physically, technically and psychologically.
However, the organisers said they could not postpone the opening ceremony two days ago because they had contractual agreements with third parties.
Viswanathan Anand
Nevertheless, the organisers said they were still open to the postponing of the first game from today to tomorrow, but this would still have to be discussed internally. Let’s see how this turns out.
In the meantime, I am priming myself up to watch the match over the Internet. There’ll be a maximum of 12 games, all playing with classical time control, and they all start at 8pm, local time here in Malaysia.
Unless there are changes to the schedule, there will be a rest day after every two days of play with an additional rest day thrown in on May 9 before the 12th game. If the score reaches 6-all, the players will break the tie with a series of faster games on May 12.
The official world chess championship website is anand-topalov.com/ but there is a host of other high profile chess websites and blogs covering the event, too. Recommended are chessdom.com, chessbase.com and Susan Polgar’s web-blog (susanpolgar.blogspot.com).
On paper, Topalov, who is presently ranked second in the world at 2805, must be considered a slight favourite over Anand, who is ranked fourth at 2787. External influences aside, one can imagine almost anything to happen in this match.
Topalov is an enterprising player who creates energy on the chessboard. He sees resources where others may well get bogged down in complications. His games are stuff to excite any onlooker.
On the other hand, Anand is more experienced in match play and his game is more sound and filled with better judgment. This shorter match of 12 games is supposed to favour the older Anand (he’s 40, five years older than Topalov) who is likelier to get tired over a longer match.
The Indian grandmaster is also believed to play better if it comes to the faster tiebreak games.