It’s becoming clear that Gelfand has put a massive amount of work in for this match, and his astute choice of defences has not allowed the Champion to use his great abilities. Can he do better with White in the next game?

1. What are the opponent’s threats? Or objects? The threats must be known but, before parrying them, see if they can be ignored.
2. Have I a sound combination?
3. If not, what should be my aims?
4. Before playing any move, consider: will this allow my opponent a sound combination?
5. During your opponent’s turn to move: make a reconnaissance, eyeing quickly all the squares each unit on the chessboard commands. How safe are the Kings? And other Pieces? What Pawns are weak? What squares?

It’s at times like this that I recall how staunch advocates of classical chess pooh poohed my suggestion that we could do with changing things a bit.

Gelfand made a clever opening choice, adopting the Gruenfeld could hardly have been expected and Anand’s innocuous 8.Bb5+ left him with nothing.

Watching live games and trying to guess the moves is a good way of trying to improve. Not only do you test yourself, you get new insights into the minds of champions.

There’s nothing more embarrassing than losing a game of chess to a chick.

Well said Rachel, though I’m not so sure about your choice of chess set or calling knights and rooks ‘horses’ and ‘castles’. Nevertheless this is a nice clear video for beginners:

Fortunately I have a pretty good score against chicks (wins versus Maya Chiburdanidze and Pia Cramling, no major losses that I can remember). But many GMs do not, some even becoming serial victims.

I have taught chess at a couple of schools and on both occasions I was happy to give it up. Most of the kids just weren’t very enthusiastic and those with promise were led away by the ‘anti-chess’ peer pressure that developed through the element of compulsion and this being ‘school stuff’.

When you force kids to do something that they’re not really that keen on a degree rebellion starts to set in.  Now they may toe the line in order to please their teachers and parents but that’s not going to develop a life long interest. Indeed as Kevin Spraggett points out here, 99% of all children who are taught chess in schools in North America stop playing the game within three years.

So why is there a huge Chess in Schools campaign here in the UK with the stated goal of teaching every child to play chess? Frankly I think they lack Richard’s, experience, insight and willingness to look critically at the studies which claim unilateral benefits for kids. We live in a World of poorly conducted studies used for propaganda purposes, and when enough uncritical minds accept their dodgy findings these can lead to the formation of government policy.

Accordingly I would like to see the various dignitaries who support compulsory chess do a compulsory statistics course and follow this up with a ten week stint teaching compulsory chess in an inner city classroom. After that I’ll be willing to admit that they have at least some qualifications for getting up on a podium!

Anand’s best trump card might be his edge at rapid chess as if the score is tied after 12 games some rapid play tie break games will take place. His score against Gelfand at 30 minutes per player per game is 8 wins to 1 with 19 draws, which looks quite convincing.

The tie break time limit is 25 minutes per player with a 10 second increment after each move, which is slightly more relaxed than a total of 30 minutes per game. Yet if the match comes down to such a tie break the biggest factor may well be an ability to withstand the nervous tension with the quality of the games being likely to be poor.

How do I think the games will go? Well probably not as expected! Both players have wide opening repertoires and will be preparing very seriously with some heavy duty hardware. One thing that interests me is in whether Boris Gelfand might play the King’s Indian, his former speciality, should Anand use 1.d4. I think it could be an interesting choice, especially as Anand has little experience against this opening and lost against it to Hikaru Nakamura.