How Dangerous The World Championship Challenger Really Was?

With a score of 8 ½ points in 14 possible (5W, 7D, 2L), GM Ian Nepomniachtchi was the clear first in the World Championship Candidate 2020/2021 tournament, qualifying himself to face the World Champion face to face, GM Magnus Carlsen, in Dubai, November 2021.

As we could see, the World Championship match finished off in an unexpected way. Essentially, we had two matches.

• The first half of the match: both players showed the highest chess level, and besides 5 draws in 6 games, they were very fighting combats.
• The second half of the match: Carlsen really imposed himself, showing consistency, while Nepomniachtchi made very atypical and serious blunders in three games (games 8, 9, and 11), losing the Match in anticipation.

As many people pointed out after the match, game 6, the longest game in 135 years of World Chess Championship history, was the watershed, as Nepomniachtchi´s serious blunders only came after it.

If we look at the score only, 7 ½ x 3 ½ in Carlsen´s favor, with the World Champion scoring 4 wins and 0 losses, we might think that the Nepomniachtchi wasn´t a threat at all to the chess crown. Well, this superficial analysis couldn´t be more wrong.

Actually, Nepomniachtchi is considered to be one of the most talented players of his generation (he and Carlsen are contemporaries), who could beat anyone in the world on a good day. I will not talk so much about his story (you can find his bio at https://www.chess.com/players/ian-nepomniachtchi), but I guess GM Daniil Dubov´s words about him studying only 3 hours a week while being a 2700 rated player speaks a lot about the natural talent of this strong GM.

Just for curiosity, Dubov also mentioned that the number of hours spent by Nepomniachtchi studying chess during the week increased considerably in recent years .

Dubov gave an interview in Russian to Levitov Chess (there are subtitles in English). He speaks about Nepomniachtchi's improvement in 38:26 of the vídeo.

I, myself, would be a bit skeptical about Nepomniachtchi chances against Carlsen if I was asked how I think he would perform in a match for the supreme chess title, but only if I was asked this question one year ago. However, this last year, studying initiative in chess while preparing a lesson in this theme for one of my students, I noticed that one of the best players in it nowadays, if not the best, is Nepomniachtchi himself.  

I went deep into some of his games and was really amused. To have an idea of how impressed I was, I started to consider Nepomniachtchi my favorite chess player (Chinese GM Bu Xianghi was my former favorite).

To get a feel of Nepomniachtchi capacities, let´s let his chess do the talking. His win over GM Li Chao (2720 FIDE at the time), at the 2017 FIDE Grand Prix Sharjah, is just an example of great chess understanding and how to play with the initiative. In this game, he crushed one of the most solid openings against 1.e4, a weapon that Nepomniachtchi himself used to hold Carlsen 2 times at the World Championship match, the Petrov´s Defence.

Only time will tell if Nepomniachtchi may be able to take another shot at the supreme chess title, but one thing is crystal clear: he surely has the potential to achieve it.

Thanks for reading till here.