World Championship 2021 match will start Nov. 24!!

[Neil Frarey]

Magnus had this to say about the commentary ...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChes...y_doesnt_care/

I just don't even remotely care.

[Kerry Liles]

I've been listening to the commentary by Judit Polgar and Anish Giri that is provided by Chess24
( https://chess24.com/worldchesschampionship/watch/ )
and I must say that they provide very interesting insight and quite a bit of side commentary on chess in general terms.

I sort of wish that Peter Svidler was doing commentary (with or without Jan Gustafsson - he also adds a lot of interesting banter)

[Hans Jung]

Game Two Interesting opening and exchange sacrifice by Magnus. I'll leave the analysis for someone better than I. (its very complicated) End result draw.

[Neil Frarey]

FIDE scrambled to replace Nepo's flag before start of play...

https://chess24.com/en/read/news/fid...-start-of-play

...LOL!

[Neil Frarey]

Good waste of the bishop pair!

Ha!

[Hans Jung]

Its game one of the match, Magnus has black, and before move 30 Magnus has a position he wants. Amazing!

However no progress was made, so draw.

[John Coleman]

Games are at 7.30 am Toronto time. I think.

[Hans Jung]

The big day is tomorrow! - and then hopefully it goes on until Christmas!

[Marc Andre Beaudry]

3-1 ten draws for Magnus

[Mike Ivanov]

I won't try to predict the amount of wins, but will be shocking if Karjakin is not on Ian's team of seconds...

[Jeffrey Xu]

I predict 9-10 draws and 3 Magnus wins.

Depending on when the 3rd Magnus win happens, the remaining games won't need to be played.

[Neil Frarey]

Rather than result, any prediction for openings?

Double bongcloud !!!

[Marc Andre Beaudry]

I agree that Magnus has played the Alekhine, but very very rarely, mostly in banter blitz and rarely in rapid. I seriously doubt he would employ it against Nepo unless he's leading by 3 pts.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Why are you guys going that deep in history and so serious?

Magnus Carlsen is not a stranger to the Alekhine defence. Recent (2020) three his games brought him 3 points against top players Nakamura, Caruana, Aronian. Maybe the actual result is different but that a short search on chessgames is good enough to hope that opening might be played in this match :)

[Marc Andre Beaudry]

The Alekhine is almost never played at the highest level. You have no space , are cramped, and against good opposition, the best you can hope is a kind of fortress draw. Of course, it is playable but as a surprise weapon, I think. Fischer played it about 5 or 6 times in his career and with success but that was because he was so much stronger than everyone . The game he won against Spassky he had a wretched game at one point. The Alekhine is not as bad as I think but , to my mind, it is an inferior defense and I will never play it. Wesley So thinks so too.