Long Live the King?

So Anand is the new World Champion - and if you don't believe me you can see the very moment it happened on this video published on the ICC.

Today Chessbase have a pictorial report of the closing ceremony and Anand's celebratory meal ...

"I'm world champion now, bring me a F***ING BIGGER CAKE"
Anand is unlikely to have said.

... while at the bottom of their report on the last round there's a few minutes of the new champ being interviewed on video.

In amongst the mundane verbiage you'd expect to be on display in such situations there's also Anand giving a somewhat less than unequivocal "bring it on" response to a question about next year's duel with Kramnik. I do hope that's not going to be the start of a campaign to get out of the match.

Anand, the fawning interviewer and anybody else for that matter, can bang on about the title be regained or won for a second time but in truth it was only on Saturday night that Anand became world champion. He took the title from Kramnik who won it from Kasparov and so on back to Steinitz.

Let's be clear, Anand is the World Champion and number one rated player in the world but if he fails to beat Kramnik in a match, the traditional format for deciding such matters, the legitimacy of his claim to be the 15th Champion will be compromised.

For now, though, Anand is undisputed King.

Anand and his second Peter Heine Nielsen

Continuing the Monty Python theme,

recetly we've been debating whether Vladimir Kramnik is or is not a big cowardy custard ...

... but what of the others? What of, say, Morozevich?

If Kramnik is brave Sir Robin (and in the video above I fondly imagine the minstrel with the tambourine to be Loek van Wely) who might Moro be?

Morozovich was up for a scrap throughout Mexico 07 and was involved in more decisive games (eight) than anybody else. Full of fighting spirit, he never gave up but try as he might, he had an unfortunate tendency to come off second best ... a bit like the Black Knight really.