Vrftsjtryk

As of 2018-11-24, 11 games have been drawn at the World Chess Championship (WCC) 2018. A lot of commentators (in particular Alexander Grischuk) have attacked Carlsen for poor preparation.

But ... 11 games have been drawn. It's not like Carlsen is losing. If it's true that he is not well-prepared, what does that say about Caruana's inability to take advantage of that and win? Should he not be criticized for not being able to win against a supposedly ill-prepared player?

In fact, if Carlsen can manage to win this WCC without preparing too much, that's a ... success, isn't it?

Carlsen is being criticized for his preparation with white, particularly e4. He knows that Caruana is going to play the Petrof yet nevertheless Caruana equalizes effortlessly. Carlsen appears to have no new ideas in this opening. Since there is no more important competition he could be saving novelties for it tells us he has no novelties. No novelties = poor preparation. If he doesn't have an answer to this he shouldn't play 1. e4

Note that we have seen novelties from Caruana, not necessarily good ones. As black in one game he played Rd8 in a Queen's Gambit looking to provoke the reply Nd2 from Carlsen. That looked like it would be a strong response from Carlsen but he chickened out and played a much more drawish move suggesting that he believed Caruana had some big improvement planned.

Carlsen is criticized because he's in a defense position (he's defending his title, and doesn't need to win all games), and people want to see crazy games with new things, as simple as that.

While I must admit that this kind of games are pretty boring, we cannot "hate" on him for having poor preparation. He's not there to entertain people.

The question is best answered by World Champions, and I don't think any of them said such a thing, but it may be the confluence of two factors.

First, and obviously, it is much more important for Carlsen to avoid being on the receiving end of ultra-sharp preparation like http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1877986. If the price to pay is entering no sharp lines of his own, then he is more than willing to pay it, since he is probably the best at quiet, dull play, or at least he was!

Second, commentators like Grischuk may not have realized how utra-dull chess can become with the current computers, even compared to the preparation Grischuk was doing 4-8 years ago. In the first game, Magnus was his scary self from Carlsen-Karjakin, with every move computer-approved and slowly shifting the balance in his favor. Even the Nd3 Petrov was an attempt to catch Fabi out, as it only draws if you know the method. Fabi thought for a few minutes probably just to mess with us or even play with his food, and played the equalizer ..Nc6. Fabi tried the Magnus recipe with b4 in the Rossolimo in game 5, and Magnus knew the equalizer.

The guys are prepared! It's just that they are prepared to play as little chess as possible. Perhaps there will be more exciting prep in a longer match, but it is hard to undo the computer damage, unless you are prepared to prepare 10x harder than what was the norm 10 years ago.