In 1974 Bobby Fischer asked FIDE to play the world championship match to ten wins, not counting draws. If each player wins nine games the title would remain with the world champion. It was rejected and in 1975 Fischer decided not to play the match with Karpov.
"It can take six months to win ten games," I argued in Pasadena in 1978. I played the U.S. Championship there, but during the evenings Bobby and I had dinners, discussing all kinds of things. "No, not if both players fight," he countered. "The baseball season takes a half year and nobody complains."
Fischer's reason for longer matches was to determine who is the better player and to eliminate accidental wins, for example falling into an opening trap or tripping over unsuspected novelty. His invention – the Fischer Random – wipes out the opening preparation.
Bobby would never agree to play a 12-game world championship. He would point to Game 3 Carlsen and Anand played in Sochi. After 26 moves the Norwegian grandmaster was in dire straits right from the opening and lost rather quickly without a fight.
An almost identical position appeared in the game Tomashevsky-Riazantsev, played in Moscow in 2008. The only difference was the position of the h-pawn on h3.
Carlsen's seconds could have caught it, but they didn't, and the finish was painful.
"When something goes wrong, it's always my fault," Carlsen softened the blow. The match was now tied.
The turning point of the match came during Game six. Trying to improve the position, Carlsen marched his king to the wrong square. It was a mental slip, an inaccuracy that should not happen. Anand didn't expect a three-move combination that would not only bail him out but would give him a big advantage. It was not there before, but Carslen made it possible and all India held its breath. Is Vishy going to find the refutation and punish Carlsen for his mishap? In one minute, in which every second felt like eternity, Anand played a pawn move and Magnus escaped. When both players realized the double-blunder, Vishy's resistance collapsed and he lost.
Inaccuracies, mistakes or just plain blunders make chess history. In the sixth game of the 1951 world championship match, David Bronstein made an unfortunate king move (57.Kc2) and Mikhail Botvinnik punished him.
After experimenting with the Sicilian, Anand returned to the Berlin defense in Game 7. Sensing his opponent vulnerability, Carlsen took Anand on a long journey lasting 122 moves. But the Norwegian was unable to win the following unusual endgame.
It was the Berlin wall at its best or worst. "It was a key game," said Carlsen later. Had he won it, the match would have been over, he believed. It should have tired Anand out; instead, it looked like it sapped energy from Carlsen.
Anand was still in the match, drawing the next three games. In Game 11, the last encounter of the match, Anand build the Berlin Wall again and played well in a tense battle. It could have gone either way, people thought, but Anand's nerves cracked first. Emotions got the better of him.
He may have thought about Tigran Petrosian, a world champion who made living out of exchange sacrifices, and made a Petrosian-like sacrifice, plugging the b-file, perhaps thinking it was the best way to force Game 12. At a first glance the sacrifice looked playable, but it was not necessary and it played into Carlsen's hands. The Norwegian loves material. He calmed down and played the technical ending well. Anand missed better defenses and Carlsen won the game and the match.
Carlsen's next world championship challenge comes in 2016. Who will be his opponent? Magnus named Fabiano Caruana, Levon Aronian and Alexander Grischuk. He didn't mention anybody from the forty-something group, players such as Anand, Kramnik, Veselin Topalov and Boris Gelfand. And Carlsen also skipped Hikaru Nakamura who won a $100,000 friendly match against Aronian last month in Saint Louis.
Original column here – Copyright Huffington Post
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