Short interview with Peter Svidler, a legend of the game who, himself, challenged for the title in the early 2000s. While no longer an active player (mostly just a coach or commentator these days,) at his current, inactive, rating he'd qualify as #42 in the world.

Here he discusses the recent form of the two championship contenders and comments on their respective style. Actually, he says, "style" doesn't make much sense for these youngsters who came off age in the era of computers... having practiced with and analyzed games with them since forever.

People who reach this level are pretty much always universal... so talking about stylistic preferences for someone playing for the world championship was KIND OF ridiculous because they could do everything.
but this generation of players seem to be a lot more concrete -- and a lot less hung up on the things which were obsessions for players of previous generations: things like "sound" positional play.

It's not that they can't play positional chess, of course they can, but their formative years were spent working with computers and that very much changes how they view the game. Because if there's one thing that computers teach you, time and time again, it is that a lot more is affordable; a lot more is defensible; a lot more is possible, if you can just calculate really, really cleanly.

"It's a lot more natural to them to play dynamic chess than to play positional chess"

What will be the key factors in the championship game?

Openings won't matter... everyone is extremely well prepared, and everybody plays the same openings.

Psych and mentality, keeping yourself (and your emotions) in check(!) will matter.

60% [Javokhir] is already very high; even with the kind of year that Gukesh has had, going higher than 55-45 isn't justifiable. Gukesh is still a very strong player, it's still a very specific format. I'm sort of willing to go 55-45 Sindarov but I don't think I'm willing to go higher.

Also, checking in on the Predyx odds:

amagad, prediction markets are efficient!!

...the polymarket people are too aggressively in favor of Javokhir (75-25)