Understandably, rival players try to weigh each other in the initial stages of any world championship match and that seemed to be happening between defending champion Anand and young challenger Carlsen also.
If the first game showed five-time champion Anand at his best theoretically, Norwegian Carlsen gave it back in the second.
Clearly, world number one Carlsen was trying to provoke Anand to go for some wild complexities but the vastly experienced Indian ace who has been in similar situations before, avoided any complications.
Against Vladimir Kramnik in 2008, the first two games were drawn like here. Against Boris Gelfand, the first six ended in draws but against Veselin Topalov things were hot right from the start as the Bulgarian won the first game itself. In all these matches Anand won in the end.
In 1995 though, in the match against Garry Kasparov of Russia, Anand faced three different first moves in the first four black games. The fourth one also was a shift as Kasparov went for the Scotch opening from the Ruy Lopez.
After a rest day today, Anand will play with black pieces in third game tomorrow. The players will play two games on the trot followed by a rest day till 10th game and for the last two games, there is a rest day after each game.
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