I think that too much emphasis is being put on Carlsen's one blunder.  Yes it was a blunder, but besides that one move Carlsen completely outplayed Anand.  It's not as though Anand outplayed Carlsen at any point and then blundered and lost; White was seriously pressing and Anand's entire conception (...a5-a4-a3) seemed to be completely wrong.  I suspect that Carlsen would have won anyway if the double blunder hadn't happened.   

Anybody's match though, I admit.  I think people are giving Anand too much credit though; he was seriously outplayed in this game, Carlsen's single blunder notwithstanding.

Smyslov_Fan wrote on 11/15/14 at 19:07:44:


Eh no, Carlsens or Anands to win. Two of them in it.

The momentum was with Anand and funny enough I dont think this game will affect that much.

This was a really rare double blunder. Of course, there have been others in WC match history, but that's kind of the point, when it happens it's memorable. 

To state that the quality of the entire game is atrocious because the players made a single slip just isn't accurate. Carlsen was pressing hard for the win, and thought he had a plan. I think if he saw that 26.Kd2 failed, he probably would have played 26.f3, to prepare the same plan but cover e4 first. If Anand had then pushed his a-pawn I think Kd2 would have been on. (I haven't checked this, so I could be very wrong.)

The mistake was substantial. Anand may have been able to win (I think someone said Black would have been up 1.37 pawns according to one engine). Anand seemed to realise he'd missed a shot around move 28. After that, his play was much weaker and he lost without a fight. 

Still, I'm not upset at the quality of the games yet. Anand's win was very impressive, as was Carlsen's draw in game 5. 

I'm sticking by my pre-match prediction of Carlsen winning by +2. I think that clearly the match isn't "anybody's to win". This match is Carlsen's to win now.

I am not sure , this miss by both players was understandable as black was in a very passive position so both sides missed the one off tactical shot.
I might even have missed it in a 1 minute game on ICC 


The old annotators used to say 'the game resumes its natural course'

Remember Anand won the playoff with Gelfand thanks to  a dreadful endgame blunder by Gelfand at the end of a Simple  R ending in the last playoff game. Karma

I think the mistakes in today's game were very instructive in a sense. 

Magnus, controlling the whole board and the game, failed to take the opponent's possibilities into account. That's a mistake I, and no doubt many others, have often made. And Anand's mistake was responding instantly. A few more seconds and he'd seen the tactic. That's tough to take and will probably nag him for months.

I hereby swear NEVER to reply instantly to any move except in severe time pressure. Ever. For the rest of my life. Anand lost the last match in part because of an instant reply in a rook endgame, and now this! But, as Kramnik said, world championship matches have their own laws, as the almost unimagineable pressures come to bear on the nerves. Anand was always the speedster and had to break himself of that youthful habit, which stemmed from his then-Capa-like instantaneous comrehension. But ike an old speech impediment which returns when we are stressed, this piece of Anand's basic nature reappeared at the worst possible moment.

an interesting question is: would Carlsen have won without making this 26.Kd2? blunder? maybe not, so was it a good blunder? ...