Yes Carlsen's play is refreshing - mainly because the last three champions were monsters in opening preparation (Anand, Kramnik, Kasparov). 

I wonder what Carlsen's victory would do for subscriptions to chesspub if everyone plays his lines...   

Also I agree with ReneDescartes about Kramnik - quite apart from his win against Kasparov, his courage in beating Topalov after forfeiting a game makes him a true legend for me, particularly when in those years around 2005 (after Kasparov's retirement) Topalov was showing some astonishingly dominant play. And there is also the introduction of the Berlin wall...

Vass wrote on 11/22/13 at 23:33:31:

I didn't follow the games with evaluation graphs, but they are already analyzed on chessDB. The obvious conclusion to draw from the match as a whole is that Magnus played better than ever, possibly better than anyone has ever played with their shoes comfortably on their feet, but sadly Anand played well below his usual strength. He admitted himself that he had made it a focus of his training to get rid of the stupid mistakes he had started making lately, but this training evidently failed... The way he plays now I rate his chances of coming back through the Candidates for a rematch as very slight.

I was hoping for a closer and even more thrilling match, but it wasn't to be. Anyway, there's no doubt whatsoever that Magnus is a worthy champion as clearly the strongest player alive (and probably of all time).

>The only thing he needs to brush up on now is his PR. Answering every question in a press conference with " I dont know...We'll see" is not really going to do it. 

Goodness, Keano, what an old grouch you are. Well, I thought exactly the opposite. Not only did he speak excellently in the press conference, answering questions with modesty and charm and refusing very properly to answer some other questions, but I venture to predict that his Facebook picture of his victory salute in the swimming pool may become the most widely published chess photograph or quote for quite some time.

If anyone needs to brush up their PR, it's Anand. Sure, I understand that the press conferences are an unpleasant ordeal after he's lost, but the guy's 43 years old. That's quite old enough to understand that Anastasia K's a nice young woman trying to do her job, and that that job is to ensure that newspapers have quotes the non- and barely-chessplaying public can understand in order that the sponsors who have made Anand a rich man think they've got value for money, and that that may involve some leading questions which some chessplayers might think slightly vacuous (not me; I thought it was a perfectly fair question; there's a big difference between calculating to the end (or trying to) and just calculating). Giving her a pat sarcastic reply was pretty poor - I'd like to think he had the class to apologise to her afterwards - and saying 'what can I say' when asked for a message for his Indian supporters wasn't great either. Kramnik did a lot better in 2008, for example.