starting at 7am eastern tomorrow, 3pm sochi russia.

Hoping anand isn't such an embarassment like he was last year. he was in much better shape during the candidates. i'm not gonna watch any berlin wall.

i'm following it but not watching every minute obviously...
interesting position right now, anand has somehow lost his positional advantage at this point.

overall i don't see him beating carlsen. i think only aronian (who unfortunately had a bad candidates tournament where he lost his first game to anand, tried to claw his way back but struggled towards the end) or maybe caruana have a good chance to beat carlsen at this format tbh...

i'm pleased with how the game went. 5 hours 18 min. i didn't really consider caruana until he dominated the sinquefield cup. i don't think anand will win either, but i do like seeing older people win at chess. korchnoi's in his 80s and still plays tournaments now and them.

age is irrelevant imo, styles make matches interesting since most top players don't really have "attitudes" or real "rivalries" nowadays...

obviously caruana is the next big thing (don't really wanna say "hype" because he IS that good) and his previous games vs. carlsen indicate that he would make it quite the challenge for the champ.
but personally i'd prefer to watch aronian battle it out with carlsen. i just love his style, would be epic...

Anand destroyed game 3 WOW

was an interesting game indeed. anand was very well prepared and finally managed to win a game from an advantageous position.
vishy striking back immediately is the best thing that could have happened to his confidence and the whole final imo. at least from a neutral perspective...

oh yes. i'm glad to see he played the sicilian instead of another berlin.

I wish I understood what this means, but I enjoy watching the games

those are chess openings. the berlin defence usually makes for defensive and boring (drawish) games.
the very popular sicilian defence (1. e4 c5) with its countless variations promises to be more exciting.

that being said, game 2 (in which anand used the berlin variation) was a win for white while game 4 (sicilian) ended in a draw...

really shocking game 6 today. let's see if anand can recover from this, i doubt it but the day off might help a bit.
still, magnus has a huge advantage (1 point up, white pieces for game 7 and psychologically of course)...