For Chennai and India’s more than one billion citizens, the 2013 World Championship was, to put it mildly, a “big deal.” The government of Tamil Nadu especially took advantage of the publicity, and photos of Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram were seemingly everywhere (see sidebar, “Chennai”).
four, Anand described his position straight after the opening moves as “just basically lost”. In fact, while the opening moves may not have gone according to plan, Anand had real compensation for the lost pawn. Most extreme was Anand’s opinion,
voiced after his round five loss, that he had effectively no chance after a mistake on the 34th move. Yet objectively his position was fine, as Carlsen confirmed. Carlsen was more than willing to feed Anand’s pessimism. It is no coincidence that Carlsen’s reply
to Anand’s 34th move in game five was played, after long and careful deliberation, with a fraction more than the usual force, subtly saying ‘Now you’re in trouble’. Anand took the subliminal message to
heart, played like a doomed man, and 20 moves later Carlsen played another rook
move with even more decisiveness, saying even more clearly ‘I’ve really got you now.’ Game six was perhaps worse; Anand
had a terrible lapse in concentration in the fifth hour but even then, Anand had one saving move. However he thought he was losing and played accordingly. By the time Anand decided to take risks
in game nine and try to mate Carlsen, the challenger had a defense in every line and Anand, too optimistically for once, thought he had seen a winning attack which was not there. To add to his lack of self confidence,
Anand had too many lapses; making game- losing blunders in three games (only two
of which were punished). Anand looked terribly out of form in one game, game six, where he seemed to be battling as much against his own unforced errors as his opponent. Though Anand described his failure of
being one of execution, it also appeared that Anand’s revamped team of seconds— longtime second GM Radoslaw Wojtaszek from Poland being joined by former world championship contender GM Peter Leko, plus Indian GMs Chanda Sandipan and Krishnan Sasikiran—could not produce the opening inspiration which could help Anand break through Carlsen’s Berlin variation of the Ruy Lopez.
“My play was a big disappointment.” ~ANAND
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