Total recall

The world championship is under way, and in the first game Topalov (White) defeated the reigning champ Anand (Black) in 30 moves. What is amazing about it is the way it is described, where both players moved quickly, obviously having prepared for this variation, until a mix-up in move order led to quick defeat.

It’s amazing for a couple reasons:

1. According to some, the particular defense employed by Anand (Grunfeld) was not expected (and there are many defenses to choose from).
2. Anand apparently deviated first from theory at the 16th move.
3. After an inaccuracy by Anand on move 23, Topalov immediately responded with the killer blow (so this again was obviously part of his preparation).

These folks play a very different kind of chess than the average tournament player. While they both have amazing positional intuition and tactical skill, it seems like what prevailed was an incredible home study coupled with a database-like memory. And what tripped up Anand was not a failure in ability to analyze but a mistake in remembering what to do (reliance on preparation over skill).

To keep that much information on hand – to know what to do at move 23 after a novelty had been played on move 16 – it’s hard for me to understand. Granted, their preparation involves using the same kind of ELO 3000+ super chess programs, and so the “novelty” was probably one of the main choices by the computer, but you have to keep in mind that most positions (especially in the opening) allow for multiple good choices. It was either a fortuitous coincidence that Anand stumbled into the one specific variation that Topalov memorized, or (much more likely) Topalov had an entire swath of Grunfeld theory (and novelty awareness) studied and memorized. And not just the Grunfeld, but any other reasonable defense Black could have chosen. It boggles my mind.

As Dennis Monokroussos put it:

That’s modern chess for you: the players reeled off 20+ moves of home prep, Viswanathan Anand seemed to forget something in a super-sharp position, and was promptly massacred by Veselin Topalov.

I should mention that as you read about the championship on various sites and blogs you will invariably come upon comments like “I can’t believe he made that move” and others like it. The people who make these comments are patzers who run through the games with chess engines and then pretend they can spot world-class level inaccuracies. If you were to pair these trolls up against Topalov or Anand in Chess960 (also known as Fischer random), which removes most if not all opening preparation and so ‘levels the playing field’ to skill alone, they would not win one game out of 100. So yeah, I guess chess discussion on the internet is like any kind of discussion on the internet. Just wanted to give a heads-up anyway.