Playing it out a bit further, after <26...Qd6 27 Bxa7 Ne5 28 Be3 Nxc4 29 Bxc4 Rxc4 30 Rd1> Kramnik would have very clear positional compensation, understandable by humans; safer king, centralized knight, influence over the dark-squares around the black king and an outside passed pawn for the exchange.

In the final position after 53...Nf3+ 54 Nxf3 Bxf3 55 c6! White's a pawn can't be kept from its coronation

I think he's realised that his world championship ambitions are now behind him, and he's made the decision to enjoy himself more at the board. As champion, he would often intone that he had 'too much respect for chess' to play unsoundly.

newton296: Nd5! just amazed me. I had to pop this move into houdini and get some lines and to my surprise the sac appears totally sound. V Kramnik - I Nepomniachtchi, Russian Superfinals 2011

click for larger view

Analysis by Houdini 1.5a w32:

1. = (-0.10): 25...Bxc1 26.Rxc1 Qd6 27.Qa4 Re6 28.Bc3 Ne5 29.Rd1 Nxc4 30.Ba1 Qc5 31.Nf6+ Rxf6 32.Bxf6 Bb5 4

2. (0.57): 25...Re6 26.Rc2 Bf8 27.Ba1 Bh6 28.Nb4 Qc5 29.Qa4 Nb8 30.Bd4 Qc7 31.Nd5 Qc6 32.Qa3 Bf8 33.Qe3 Bc5

3. (0.78): 25...Bf8 26.Bxa7 Re6 27.Bd4 Bh6 28.Nb4 Qc7 29.Qxc7 Rxc7

great evaluation by kramnik, black has to make alot of best moves just to avoid total implosion and kramnik's young opponent can't quite measure up against the world champs pressure!

I don't like this Bluffnik guy.

http://youtu.be/fxdiraVxwkI

<Kasparov is engaged in constant battles to prove himself. Very strange battles. Many people would be quite happy to become world champion. He has been world champion for a very long time, so he wanted to become the highest rated player in chess history. Garry's involved in constant battles with the living and the dead... If you approach things from that point of view, he is not going to be defeated by a human being. That would be some sort of admission. So it has to be by something else, a computer.... For him, Paul Morphy is a rival. I'm not joking. In his time, in the 1850s, Morphy was much better than his contemporaries, and the same can be said of Garry. So he sees Morphy as a rival, even though he has been dead for more than a hundred years. For a long time, Fischer was his main rival, because they said Fischer is the greatest player of all time. When Fischer played the match last year against Boris Spassky, for Garry it was very important to "rubbish" the chess that was played. It was not so bad. I mean, it was not an outstanding match, but it was not bad. But it was important for Garry's own security. It is strange,he constantly has to prove himself.>

That may be the reason Kramnik preferred rapid chess earlier in his career, when he could give freer rein to his imagination without the feeling of responsibility to find chess truth.

Kramnik: There’s no paradox. Always living up to the status of champion isn’t all that easy. For some, perhaps, it helps, mobilising them, but for me… For me it created additional – and entirely unnecessary – stress. I feel as though I play well in relaxed, creative conditions. When I don’t think about anything and simply play chess things go much better for me. It might seem strange, but after the match with Anand, when you’d have thought that I should have been really upset, I managed to feel liberated and started to play chess for my own pleasure again.>

I can say that my style may be explained by the fact that my favourite book was Anatoly Karpov's <Sixty Best Games>. I played through these games over and over again and this probably helped form my style. I only had very few chess books. There were not many chess books in the local bookshop. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that the books chose me than that I chose the books (laughs). It is quite possible that my style would have been completely different if my first book had been a games collection of Kasparov. But this was just the way it went.>

Look under <Regression towards mean>.

<Q. Your fans hope so too. But, in general, we end up with a paradox: normally after becoming champion a sportsman rises to a new level, getting even stronger, while you’ve got stronger after losing the crown.>

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