How Magnus Won The World Chess Championship
Would you like to find out how Magnus Carlsen became the World Champion, and arguably the Greatest Chess Player Of All Time?
Let's discover the tricks Carlsen used to win the 2021 World Championship Match against the Russian challenger GM Ian Nepomniachtchi with a score of 7.5-3.5 - the fourth largest percentage score in the history of World Chess Championship Matches! Click the video below:
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I share with you the story of how Carlsen became the World Champion in the first place, so that you know the context behind the 2021 World Championship Match between Carlsen and Nepomniachtchi. I've included a detailed written overview at the end of this blog - or you can click to the next chapter if you already know the backstory of Carlsen's rise to the top.
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The match itself started somewhat quietly, with the challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi not playing in his usual aggressive, complicating and confident style, but instead trying to be more solid and hold off Carlsen for as long as possible. This worked for the first five games - Nepo even had excellent chances to win Game 2:
However, the turning point of the match was Game 6, where Nepo was unable to 'betray' his typical style of playing any longer, and pushed for the win against Carlsen with the Black pieces.
It nearly paid off, as Carlsen faltered in the mutual time scramble after failing to punish Nepo's mistake, but then at the key moment, Nepo failed to play the 'automatic' capture of a free pawn, instead getting ground down in a record-breaking 136-move slugfest where Carlsen, in trademark fashion, squeezed blood out of a stone in a long endgame:
From there, Nepo was unable to recover, making major blunders in several games as a result of trying to avoid drawish continuations. For example:
The result? Carlsen won the match with a score of 7.5-3.5 - the most dominant showing in a World Championship match in a very long time.
Comment below - who do you believe will challenge or dethrone Magnus Carlsen in the future?
Credit to Lennart Ootes for the photo of Magnus Carlsen used in the thumbnail and the photo. This thumbnail/photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
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How Carlsen Became The World Champion
Carlsen didn't start playing chess competitions until 8 years of age, but progressed very quickly, dominating the Nordic junior scene and facing off against another big talent, Russia's Ian Nepomniachtchi, in European and World Junior Championships.
'Nepo' got the better of these encounters, but Carlsen realized that there were bigger fish to fry, and after travelling around Europe in the family van in 2003 to focus on chess, he had his breakthrough year in 2004, scoring three Grandmaster 'norms' (results) to become the second youngest Grandmaster ever at the time, at 13 years, 4 months and 27 days.
From there, Carlsen broke the record of the youngest player ever to break 2700 in 2007, at just 16 years of age, quickly establishing himself as one of the very top players in the world.
In 2009, Carlsen enlisted the training of former World Champion Garry Kasparov, and their cooperation bore fruit at the end of 2009, when Carlsen became the youngest ever world no.1 on the FIDE rating list at the age of just 19, thanks to dominant wins of the Nanjing Pearl Springs and London Chess Classic super-tournaments.
Despite being the no.1 on the FIDE rating list for 10 years consecutively (starting in 2011), it wasn't until 2013 that Carlsen entered the final stages of the World Chess Championship cycle. He won the 2013 FIDE Candidates on tiebreak from Vladimir Kramnik, despite losing two of his last three games. Then in the 2013 World Championship Match, Carlsen defeated the reigning World Champion, Viswanathan Anand, by a dominant score of 6.5-3.5 to claim the World Champion title just before his 24th birthday.
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