Chess World Cup: A Russian-Style Contemplation Draw
World chess championships have existed since 1886, so the record that Magnus Carlsen and Jan Nepomnjashchi set in Dubai on Friday stands out from a particularly long period of time. You played the longest World Cup game in 135 years: 136 moves.
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In the past, after such a great feat, you would have had a cognac or smoked a cigar together and rested for a few days. Time was abundant in the 19th century. Carlsen and Nepo do not have this privilege. After their game, which started on Friday and lasted until after midnight, for seven and three quarters of an hour, they have to go straight back to the board in the afternoon of the day that started.
This is the 21st century and things are going on in quick succession. At least that would please the audience. It would be best if Carlsen would follow suit with another victory, or Nepo would take revenge immediately. Action!
But even these calibres don't just put up with a marathon game like this. And if they say the opposite of what they're doing, they don't have to be believed.
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Nepo is Russian. His career is based on the great tradition of the Russian chess school, whose golden rule is: If you lose, you first play a draw, a contemplative draw. Nepo had his chances on Friday and missed, then he faltered and fell. On Saturday it is important to get back on the safe footing. A lot can be spoiled from emotion, and what a shame that would be.
So Nepo creates the seventh game like the fifth, in which he was a little better with the white pieces in a Spanish opening, had a slight pressure, was in no danger.
Carlsen also chooses the same moves as in the fifth game; this time he spares his opponent an amazing innovation. Let Nepo come, he seems to be saying to himself, and Nepo comes a little: Instead of the Spanish queen's pawn move to c3, he plays the queen's pawn on d3. Nobody dies from it; we are in the realm of nuances, of minimalisms.
Carlsen likes to be cautious for three reasons. For one thing, he has one more point, why rush something? If all other games end in a draw, he would remain world champion. Second, he's black, and black is the color of humility in chess. You lag half a train behind the white man, and any boldness quickly turns into folly.
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And third, there is a chilling example of hormonal cockiness in World Cup history. When the Indian Viswanathan Anand defended his title against the Belarusian Israeli Boris Gelfand in Moscow in May 2012, Anand lost the seventh game after six agonizing draws. Gelfand, basically a level-headed man who had perhaps had to wait too long for his right to challenge, wanted to close the sack the next day and still with black. His game layout was as raw as a dashcam video from Russian traffic. This encounter also went down in the chess history books: as the shortest game in World Cup history, 17 moves, Gelfand's task. To speak to Kafka, it was as if shame should outlive him. He lost the world championship fight.
While the two players are heading towards the end of the game in Dubai on Saturday, I run into Vladimir Potkin, the Russian grandmaster and Nepos chief secretary, in the foyer of the gaming room. I tell him about the great interest in chess in Germany, although we don't have a Magnus or a Nepo yet. Yeah, Germany, he raves. In the summer he was with Nepo in Munich, the basketball department of Bayern Munich invited them. "We had a good time and good training. Basketball is our favorite sport. And we were thrilled to be on one of the best European teams. That was very important to us."
It's been two good weeks, and I'm trying to imagine Nepo playing basketball. Is there a fitness trainer in Nepo's team in Dubai now? Potkin suggests that the physical work was done beforehand; now the focus would be on chess; now it's about keeping the energy level.
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I tell him I would have liked to recover from yesterday's mammoth game, when I was just a spectator. How does Nepo do that from now on? Potkin, speaking in a warm tone and occasionally throwing in a relaxed smile, shifts the answer from the present to the deep past. Long games were also played during the Soviet era, Karpov versus Kasparov, three or four rounds a week, as well as hanging games that continued after an interruption. Well, the program might not have been as intense as it is today, but what do you want to do? Go to the board and fight!
A little later, the actors shake hands. Magnus Carlsen, born in 1990, who conquered the chess world from Norway as a child prodigy, and his challenger Jan Nepomnjaschtschi, a little older, who was still a child of the Soviet Union: they split on move 41, a draw.
The eighth round begins on Sunday. The title fight will take place on the grounds of the World Exhibition Expo. It could last until mid-December.
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