In a field with the likes of Aronian, Topalov, and Kramnik, I doubt too many people predicted Boris Gelfand would win the Candidates matches, but for the first time in his life (at age 43!), the corpulent Belarusian will play for the World Championship.
With World Champion Vishy Anand turning 41 later this year, this looks like the oldest pair of World Championship combatants in many years. Their combined ages total 84.
You have to go all the way back to Botvinnik-Petrosian 1963 to find an analogue: Botvinnik was then a creaky 52(!), while his Armenian challenger had seen a mere 34 summers, for a combined total of 86.
For a World Championship match where both players were over 40, you have to go way back to Alekhine-Bogulyubov II (1934), when Alekhine was 42 and "Bog" was 45 (total = 87).
Therefore this is the "oldest" World Championship in 77 years--a surprising statistic in a chess era where youth is both stronger and more prevalent than at any other time in history!
No comments:
Post a Comment