On World Chess Championship 2008 - Kramnik vs. Anand at Bonn

It is the finals of the world chess championship 2008 at Bonn. 12 games will be played between Anand and Kramnik. He who scores 6.5 first will become the world chess champion.

At the time of writing, 8 games have been played, Anand has won 3 games, and the remaining 5 have been drawn. Anand already has 5.5 points and needs one more win or two more draws to retain the title.

The biggest surprise of the Match has been Anand's opening choice as White. He has been a devoted e4 player all his life. For this particular Match, he has exclusively opened with d4. This must have negated all the preparation Kramnik had done for the past few months. Most interestingly, Anand's repertoire as both Black and White is now almost exactly the same as what Kramnik used to play! Thus, he is beating Kramnik by playing like Kramnik!!!

Since the tournaments and matches are so dominated by one's opening preparation, the true Over The Board strength remains unchallenged mostly. I had an interesting idea for tournament format to address this problem - what if all players are required to play first 10 moves of the games by correspondence? That way, when the game begins, opening is no more the determining factor. Both sides would have had ample chance to study the position and make creative preparations.

The audience will also get a chance to make their own analysis with the aid of a computer and make better predictions about the future moves or course of the game. Most importantly, if someone wins, it is because he better understood the position. In other words, the winner of the tournament understands chess the best!