World Chess Championship: A Youth Who Understands Chess As A Mill
On Friday afternoon, the mood in the lobby of the exhibition hall threatens to change. While the world champion and his challenger sit down on the board after five draws for the sixth game, inside the game room on the stage in the acoustically shielded glass box, outside under the assembled chess press it is unlikely that another draw could be conveyed to the audience.
A very knowledgeable colleague who has been reporting on chess for decades is even said to have said that, if things continued like this, this would definitely be the last World Cup in classic mode. In the future, the match will be a combination of slow games and accelerated formats to force wins and losses.
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Ole Kristian Strøm from Verdens Gang in Oslo, Carlsen's personal reporter for ten years, has already prepared everything for today's draw. It would be the 20th World Cup draw in a row, a round number, albeit not an anniversary, and definitely no reason to celebrate, especially not in Norway, where they finally want to see execution.
Magnus Carlsen seems to sense the assignment and, even more, to want to carry it out. With White, he begins the game as a queen pawn game, as in the second round, the most exciting one so far. After a few moves he has fianchetted his king's runner and starts to place the women's runner on the other large diagonal: Nepo, as they all call Jan Nepomnjashchi here, in the crossfire of the white bishops.
The surprise follows immediately. Carlsen doesn't push his women's runner on the big diagonal. Instead, he offers a pawn sacrifice on move 10 through a knight move never seen in master practice. It is the world champion who challenges the challenger and not the other way around. In several games, Nepo was served a farmer's breakfast early on. He then had to consider whether he would like it or not. In any case, Carlsen determines what happens from the start and not his opponent, whose preparation is considered excellent.
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In this round, Nepo decides against the tempting offer, in whose dangerousness a commentator like ex-world champion Viswanathan Anand would not believe at all. "A whole farmer!" Anand exclaims. And for what?
Nepo prefers to be careful. He doesn't want to fall into a trap in the hope that it won't snap. Instead, he finds the next move but one, which Carlsen will say many hours later that he was not prepared for it and was left on his own from then on, without all the months of preparation. You can see that during the game. Carlsen, who instigates an entanglement that is supposed to ponder his counterpart, suddenly lapses into deep thought and time is running out.
So Nepo manages to withstand Carlsen's demands again, imaginatively, flexibly. For now, he would have earned a resilience award.
The world championship attempt to create an imbalance out of which he then wants to bring down the challenger fails. Black is good at the game, his pieces are active; at some point the desire germinates in Nepo to want something more.
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Perhaps this is how the decision on move 17 is to be understood to have the king's position torn open without exchanging queens on this occasion, which would have been possible and would have prevented later inconveniences. Although - one would have to take a closer look at this position in order to really be able to judge it. Maybe Nepo decides not to swap women simply because Magnus Carlsen is sitting across from him, who is known for only turning it up when the women are no longer there.
Carlsen finds another way to get rid of his queen, and Nepo offers it to him: the exchange for two towers on the 26th turn. This, too, is a decision that may be questionable in the light of the following. So something is slowly brewing here that initially impresses no one, neither Nepo, nor the commentators, nor the audience.
On move 33 Black gets a passed pawn on the a-file, which compensates for the fissured position of the king, as holding him up binds White's forces. For a while now it even looks like Nepo has a better chance.
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If anyone has a chance here at all. Because the Norwegian supercomputer Sasse, at whose analyzes everyone in Carlsen's camp is staring like an overpowering oracle, only ever shows 0.00. And 0.00 means: complete compensation.
Meanwhile, the game continues. It enters the second, third, fourth hour, the fifth. Anyone who follows them alternately in the darkened game room in Dubai, in the lobby, in the press center, in the Carlsen camp, on the screens of the various chess platforms, will eventually blur their impressions.
Only 0.00, that remains, 0.00, 0.00 ...
But there is an imbalance on the board. Magnus Carlsen, still with this taut body, sits hunched over, taut like an arch. Nepo looks plump in comparison, he sits sacky like you and me, as if the twenty pounds he starved himself before the fight had somehow not disappeared or came back surprisingly.
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Chess is a sport. You can see it here. It is no longer just a matter of ingenuity, the beauty of the combination, the objective assessment of one's position. This is about perseverance and perseverance, pure willpower. MAGNUS CARLSEN WANT. You have to write it in capital letters.
Nepo is doing well. - No, I can't write that like that. That sounds patronizing, condescending. That would not do him justice: - Nepo defends himself great. He fends off all attempts. But just, he defends himself, he has to defend himself. It may be 0.00 for twenty moves, but Carlsen is the one who presses, and he knows how to press.
Nepos disaster takes off when his passed pawn disappears from the board on move 53. Carlsen even wants to give a rook for Nepo's bishops to get the pawn. But Nepo doesn't take the tower. He believes, and the machines prove him right, that with a queen and bishop against two rooks and a knight he can keep the balance better than with a queen against a rook and knight, not counting the remaining pawns.
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And now, step by step, the transformation begins: From Carlsen, the 31-year-old draw world champion, the 23-year-old Magnus, the youth who sees chess as a mill, emerges. I grind until there is only dust on the board.
The fight goes into the sixth, the seventh hour. The computers stoically show 0.00. The fight is in the eighth hour, but please, don't pin me down on the minutes. I feel like everyone else who lingers in the exhibition center while the world exhibition Expo is closing its gates outside and the last onlookers are rushing from the site to catch another metro. We watch mesmerized.
The fight is in the eighth hour and there are only seven stones left on the board: the king from Carlsen, a rook, the knight and two pawns, from Nepo the king and queen. Seven stones! This is the hour of the so-called table bases. Chess is calculated from behind. For all positions with seven stones, the computers know how the game will end, and Sasse no longer shows 0.00 but: THEORETICAL DRAW.
The game will end in a draw. So, with the small, non-machine restriction: when the best moves are made on both sides. White tries to push his five-man ensemble amoeba-like to the black back row in order to lead one of the two pawns to the queen. Black tries to prevent this from happening on all sides by means of chess rules. This works out. That works. That is how it is calculated by computers.
But both players only have minutes left and no more time to dive deep. You have to pull. And that's easier for Carlsen. He can't lose if he keeps his pieces together. He can still win if Nepo makes an inaccuracy.
And, well, suddenly Sasse indicates: White mates in 46 moves. It was just 0.00, then theoretically a draw, now it's practically lost.
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Seven hours and 45 minutes have been played. A whole working day is up. I'm in the second row of the game room. Midnight is through. A quarter past. In front of me, Carlsen and Nepo in the glass case, a few meters away. A white pawn is already on the sixth row, the black king on the edge, the queen wandering helplessly. Nepo jerks in his chair so that the backrest wobbles. He changes his sitting position every ten seconds. He puffs up his cheeks. You can see the pressure. When Carlsen tightens the noose, Nepo shakes his head. The shaking becomes a shake, as if his head is falling off at any moment. He raises and lowers his eyebrows, then - he extends his hand over the table. Congratulations. Carlsen takes a deep breath, grimaces. He's done. He did it.
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There is still a lot to write about now. About the press conference afterwards, to which Nepo also appears, which is to be credited to him, because hardly a grandmaster can stand to hear the question after such a fight, why he would not have drawn something different here and there, which is much better would have been. About Carlsen, who - almost in disbelief himself - can be seen with relief. Victory. Finally a victory. And another record: the longest game in World Cup history. 136 moves! A game that starts in the afternoon and ends the next day. About Carlsen's personal reporter, Ole Kristian Strøm from Verdens Gang , who can now simply throw away his beautiful preparation for the 20th draw.
But in a few hours it will continue with the seventh game.
The seventh round of the World Chess Championship in Dubai begins on Saturday. The title fight will take place on the grounds of the World Exhibition Expo. It's scheduled for 14 rounds and could last until mid-December.
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