It'll only go down in history if Fabi wins the match. The engines only had Magus at -0.65 or so, which means he's clearly better, but his position isn't won. He could torture Fabi for sure, but he wasn't winning.
I also don't know if the time matters that much. Fabi's last few moves showed that he had a clear plan of improving his knight to h3-g5-36 and some of Magnus's moves would leave Fabi with clear and obvious defensive moves. I think Fabi would easily have made the TC.
We will never know, of course, but I really think Magnus would have won the position in game 12, and moreover, his winning chances in Game 12 are higher than his winning chances in Rapids in my unscientific, unquantifiable opinion.
Unless they get to a tablebase, an engine can't tell if it's winning or not. Only play can.
It's hard to know if Magnus would have won, but in theory Fabi also could have won if the position had swung dramatically, which can happen in dynamic games.
I think his chances in the tiebreaks are better. Hikaru had him at about 80% to win them pre-match and I think that's higher than the likely winning chances in Game 12. The format for tiebreak is 4 games of G/25 +10 sec increment. Mags is a multi time world rapid championship (and blitz too) and Fabi historically underperforms at fast TCs. He's also been behind on the clock for much of this match.
I'm mostly upset that there is another rest day and I still don't understand why there was an extra rest day before game 12.
What is all this focus on 8 more moves? If he reached the time control and still offered a draw people would still be upset with him. He knows he's the clear favorite in the tiebreak so he's taking it.
Sometimes I get into those fun but silly discussions about the greatest chess player of all time, and there are quite a few Magnus Carlsen advocates. I was a Bobby Fischer fan boy, but ultimately I had to acknowledge that Garry Kasparov is/was better than Bobby.
So now, with Magnus drawing the Classical portions of his WCC matches against Karjakin and Caruana, I just can't put Magnus ahead of Garry Kasparov.
What is all this focus on 8 more moves? If he reached the time control and still offered a draw people would still be upset with him. He knows he's the clear favorite in the tiebreak so he's taking it.
Because he had that long to force Caruana to find moves in time pressure.
Getting back to the original post about Fabio's opening preparation with the White pieces, I was unpleasantly surprised to learn (when I tuned in) that Fabio was behind on the clock, and had the (slightly) worse position with White. I was like, WTF, how can this be? Fabio's team had the rest day to really go over what they had previously prepared, and cook up something really special for Magnus in Game 12!
Lo and behold, a Sveshnikov! Magnus didn't play 1. e5! I don't have the times taken for each move, but when did Fabio start taking a long time on his moves? How could he be thrown off from his opening prep so easily? Was it when Magnus play Ng6 instead of Ng8? And if so, don't you think that Fabio and his team should have been ready for that move?
In summary, I'm a bit disappointed in Fabio's opening preparation in Game 12. Instead of pressuring with the advantage of the White pieces for a long time, Fabio was fighting for his life in the position, and was also in very worrisome time trouble. That is not a good showing for the Seconds on Team Fabiano.
We were robbed of yet another good game when Mag offered the draw!