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World Chess Championship: Magnus Carlsen defends title

Carlsen beat Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia, securing the one point he needed to cross the seven point threshold to win the global tournament held at Dubai's Expo 2020 this month in the United Arab Emirates.

By
Magnus Carlsen
This is the fourth time that Magnus Carlsen is defending the world title.

Bengaluru, December 11: Reigning world chess champion Magnus Carlsen defended his title at the FIDE World Chess Championship in Dubai.

The Norwegian beat Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia, securing the one point he needed to cross the seven point threshold to win the global tournament held at Dubai's Expo 2020 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The Russian's proficiency in faster time formats also prompted hope that he might pose the sternest challenge yet for Carlsen, seeing as the previous two World Championships - against Fabiano Caruana and Sergey Karyakin - were decided in short time-limit tie-breakers after the players drew all 14 of the longer time-limit games.

After five drawn games, Carlsen pulled off a 136-move victory in the sixth. Thereafter, it was clear that Nepo was not the same. He committed one pawn-move blunder three times in the next five games and the result was a premature end to the match.

After that surprise blunder by Nepomniachtchi, Carlsen clinched his fifth world championship title. Up until that point, the match was tense with games ending in draw after draw.

"Then everything kind of clicked. I think after that it all went my way," Carlsen told reporters from the world's fair after his win.

"You don't expect necessarily to run away with it in a World Championship."

Carslen, who acquired an unassailable 7.5-3.5 lead in the best-of-14-game showdown also sealed 60 per cent of the $2.3 million (€2 million) prize money.

Nepomniachtchi said he was struggling to understand exactly what went wrong and at the moment had "no idea".

"The things that happened to me here never happened to me basically at any events ... in my career I lost quite some stupid games," Nepomniachtchi said grimly.

"I should find out why it happened.

This is the fourth time that Carlsen is defending the world title he first won from Viswanathan Anand in 2013. He overcame the challenges of Anand (2014), Sergey Karjakin (2016) and Fabiano Caruana (2018) before destroying Nepo.

Nepomniachtchi came into the contest in the UAE as one of very few players with a winning career record against Carlsen in classical chess, although the Norwegian has regained the upper hand over the past few weeks in the Gulf region. The pair, separated by just five months in age, have been rivals since they were teenagers.

"I'm relieved, of course. It's hard to feel that great joy when the situation was so comfortable to begin with, but I'm happy with a very good performance overall," the 31-year-old added.

"I didn't expect it to go quite like this," Carlsen dwelled further.

"I think it was just a very good professional performance overall. No regrets at all, just very satisfied.

"I guess it's the most similar to my first match with Anand (in 2013), which was quite even and nervous at the start, When I got my first win, it was kind of the same story: it was relatively clean from there on out," added Carlsen, who has now won five world titles in a row, after first sealing the crown in 2013.

He is also the reigning world rapid and blitz chess champion, which literally means he has a complete stranglehold on chess' most prestigious titles in all time formats.

(With inputs from FIDE/Agencies)

Story first published: Saturday, December 11, 2021, 11:09 [IST]
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