It is experience vs youth as Viswanathan Anand takes on Magnus Carlsen

Viswanathan Anand vs Magnus Carlsen. The world champion vs the World No. 1; the King vs the Crown Prince. This is the chess battle of this century, As the first game of the World Chess Championship unfolds at Hotel Hyatt Regency here on Saturday, history is in the making over the next three weeks. If Carlsen wins, he would herald a new era in World Championship. If Anand wins, he would be rated along with Garry Kasparov as the most successful world champion in modern chess.

There was never a match of this magnitude in chess in the last 30 years. The one closest to this was the epic battle between Russians Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik in 2000 but then it was not held under the auspices of the world chess federation (FIDE).

The Indian’s public announcement about the seconds he had worked with on Thursday was a big revelation. The team is basically Indian in nature with Krishnan Sasikiran and Sandipan Chanda, though the absence of Surya Sekhar Ganguly is still difficult to digest. It is quite possible that Ganguly must have trained with him at some point in his preparation because of his sound opening knowledge.

However, the big surprise is that Peter Leko is part of his team, though again there was a rumour that he had worked with the Indian prior to his 2012 match against Boris Gelfand too. Leko is an opening master and his games mainly are targeted at the draw result. Radislaw Wojtaszek, the Polish GM, continues to be with Anand but the full story would be available only after the match as the world champion put some riders to his honest disclosures about his seconds.

The Bobby Fischer vs Boris Spassky match in 1972 in Reykjavic was dubbed as the Match of the Century. Chess history has evolved since then. It is no longer a war between Russia and America. Fischer was the first non-Russian to win the world title and the hype around that match was understandable. Russia never stopped producing world chess champions after that – Karpov, Kasparov, Alexander Khalifman, Kramnik, Rustam Kasimdzhanov...

It was Anand who shone like a beacon in the midst of all the Russian stars. But he had to wait long enough to get his due. When he won his first world title in Tehran, his critics said he did so in the absence of Kasparov and Karpov. It was not his fault that both of them were not part of the world championship cycle. One had retired and the other had his own cycle to look after.

Carlsen is a genius, though he looked nervous in his first pre-match press conference. The Norwegian shot into fame when he was just 18 and became the world No. 1 at 19. Since then, he has not looked back. He not only kept his World No. 1 ranking to himself, he has also added one more feather to his cap: the world’s highest-ranked player ever. At 2870, he has left his predecessor Kasparov far behind (2851).

However, world titles are not won on the strength of rating. They have to be fought over the board and that is when Anand (2775), rated almost 100 points behind Carlsen, would hold all the aces. Carlsen has not played a world championship match yet while Anand is the most experienced match player at the moment.

Anand’s last opponent in world championship, Boris Gelfand, feels that Carlsen is beatable. “If there will be a real Vishy, he’ll give a fight. He has a huge match experience. In addition, Carlsen also has weaknesses. We all saw how he got nervous at the Candidates’ when not everything went smoothly... It will be really interesting to see their match.”

On the eve of the match, the big question was: what opening is Carlsen going to play on Saturday? Will he open with the King-pawn or Queen-pawn as he has almost an equal share of these two in his games archives.

Kasparov, who is backing Carlsen to win the title for the good of chess, is on his way to Chennai. He will definitely come up with some his wise cracks to make his presence felt in India.
But before that, let the games begin.