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Comment by zarzavat | Hacker News Reader

Even if the quality of play in this match has been not great, one thing I really enjoyed was the extremely high class of commentary.

Caruana, Giri, Anand, Svidler and Nakamura have been doing commentary (simultaneously!) throughout the match. It has been a real treat, I don't believe any match before has had such a deep level of live analysis. I have had five different streams open at times just to listen to them all :)

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I didn’t think the commentary was that good this year, too many awkward personalities. Anish was constantly talking over Judit. I tuned into to Vishy’s stream for a bit, but the person he had with him was incredibly awkward. I find Danny Rensch to be completely insufferable, which is a shame because Caruana is so good. Howell and Houska are pretty good, but they had some terrible guests on that stream, and all of the beard guys segments were incredibly cringe.

Jan and Svidler from the Karjaken match was the best commentary team we’ve had for a championship imo. I remember the main Chennai team being pretty decent as well, Tania’s a very good commentator, so I don’t know why they had her running around the event center interviewing people.

Agree with all your first paragraph points. Although he's only an IM, I really like Eric Rosen - he's a pretty reasonable personality and is able to crack jokes and keep the conversation moving nicely. Unfortunately he was part of the broadcast with Danny Rensch. Giri just seemed downright rude to Judit. He ignored what she was saying in many instances, argued with her when he was listening, and failed to credit her when he predicted or calculated something incorrectly.

I'm also not a huge Maurice Ashley fan - but think he did a good job handling the press conferences. What was interesting was that for Karjakin/Carlsen, Jan Gustafsson was doing commentary, but also was part of the Carlsen analytics/prep/second team. Svidler's analysis is always enjoyable, but sometimes he seems bored with games and his language almost becomes 'this is over let's move on'.

Svidler and Rosen would be a good combo.

Anish did talk over Judit a lot, but quite often that was justified. At the moment of the c5 blunder, for example, they were analysing that exact move because Judit had suggested it, and Anish was explaining how it was just a whole piece.

Judit had a huge amount of patience and didn't seem frustrated by Anish at all, through any of the coverage. And even though Judit did initially play the c5 blunder, she was really great and insightful through the entire match, many times seeing things that Anish missed. Really they made a great duo and added to the fun and enjoyment of a difficult and long match.

Yeah, they did work as a pairing, and I regularly switched over from the Levitov Chess World stream (admittedly more often to see Magnus reaction shots though).

Yes while I understand how Giri could come across as rude, personally I thought he was just extremely passionate. As the 3rd place finisher in the Candidates he was very personally invested in this match, it could have easily been him sitting across from Carlsen.

If there's one person who could handle him and remain completely cool throughout it's Judit, they made a good team.

I thought Judit and Anish were really wonderful together.

Caruana is the best. On top of his chess brilliancy he’s never rude or over dramatic. Infuriating that they IMxplainig over him.

Let Fabio speak!

I missed the dry humour of Grischuk so much, it was a shame he was only doing commentary for Russian audience (in Russian).

Svidler and Miro with the occasional kramnik and karjakin was great. I do miss the svidler gustie duo but we're not likely to get that while Jan is a second for Magnus.

Excuse my ignorance. Is Jan really that good of a player to be Magnus' second? Somehow his laidback style commentary made me feel he was not too serious with preparation

He's a good theoretician, and always shows interesting sidelines in his broadcasts. His job isn't to teach Magnus to be better at chess, it's to be on top of current theory and help anticipate what the opponent's team might prepare. I think Magnus's team has done that very well the last couple of cycles.

If you see his job to be at the cutting edge of Ruy/Marshall/anti-Marshall the results of games 1-6 suggest he’s done a phenomenal job.

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