Thursday 7 November 2013

2013 World Championship Match - Carlsen to start with White

The opening ceremony for the 2013 World Championship match has just been held in Chennai, India. As part of the ceremony, there was a drawing of lots for the colours, with Carlsen drawing the white pieces for game 1. As the schedule of the match has 2 games followed by a rest day (to a maximum of 12 games), the colours 'flip' in game 7, with Anand having two whites in a row (games 6 & 7). This is to dissipate any advantage that might be gained by having white after a rest day. It does mean that Carlsen starts with white (often an advantage), but then finishes with white (in game 12), which might also be helpful.
The first game is on Saturday (9th November). Each game starts at 3pm local time, which is 8:30pm Canberra time. There will be plenty of places to view the match online, but the official website is probably as a good a place as any to start.
I hope to cover a lot of the match on this blog over the next few weeks. Hopefully it won't be the snooze fest that the Anand-Gelfand match was, otherwise I'll need to find something else to fill in the blank pages!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Here is Ian Rogers' couch potato's guide to enjoying the match:
http://www.worldchesschampionship2013.com/2013/11/gm-ian-rogers-must-read-couch-potatos.html
AO