World Championship - game on!

The score is 5.5 - 5.5 in the Anand - Topalov match and today is Game 12, the last of the classical games. A big, big game as the winner will be world champion; a draw will lead to a tie-break situation with rapid play games and then blitz. Topalov has the advantage of the white pieces so there is much speculation as to what opening will be played. The general assumption is that 1.d4 will be played as it has been (I think) by white in all bar game 11 when Anand played the English (1.c4), it would be exciting to see 1.e4 but that seems unlikely at this stage with so much at stake. The replies from Anand so far have been either a 'Kramninkian' Slav defense or the Grunfeld, which has typically led to sharper play, or at least more mistakes/opportunities.

Kick-off is at 13:00 BST and online coverage is very good. My preference is a combination of the official site and other sources of analysis. The official site tracks the live game and also has a web-cam feed so that you can see what the players are doing.

http://www.anand-topalov.com/

In addition I have been following ICC commentary (this requires paid membership) . Chessdom amongst others provides ongoing comment on the game, but recently I have found that Susan Polgar's live comments are pretty good http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/ .

PS I haven't forgotten the seminar on the 15th, as I haven't seen many of you for a while it would be nice to catch up and perhaps share a few jars, if you can tear yourselves away from the footie ;-)