The World Championship match between champion Viswanathan Anand and challenger Boris Gelfand began today, with a rather short (24-move) draw. Gelfand appeared to have slightly the upper hand, but as GM Sergei Shipov said, “he considered a draw from a position of strength to be a good outcome. That’s his right.”
For people who enjoyed following Shipov’s commentaries to the 2010 World Championship match between Anand and Topalov, I’m glad to announce that I will again be translating some of his commentaries here. I have agreed with Colin McGourty, who runs the site www.chessintranslation.com, to split the games, with six of the translations appearing here and six at his site. Here is the schedule that we have agreed on:
| Round | Date | Translation to appear at: |
| 1 | 5/11 | Chess in Translation |
| 2 | 5/12 | Chess in Translation |
| 3 | 5/14 | Chess in Translation |
| 4 | 5/15 | dana blogs chess |
| 5 | 5/17 | dana blogs chess |
| 6 | 5/18 | Chess in Translation |
| 7-12 | To be determined |
As always, Shipov’s commentaries in the original Russian will appear at Crestbook. I hope you will agree that they are among the wittiest and most insightful world championship commentaries on the Internet.
Because I live eleven time zones behind Moscow, where the match is being played, I will not attempt to translate the games live. (I would have to get up at 3:30 AM!) However, I will try to post the translations within a couple hours after the completion of the games, and definitely on the same day.
I look forward to welcoming you back here on Tuesday for the fourth game of the match!
