If there’s still no victor, the 2016 World Chess Championship goes to five-minutes blitz games.
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A week into the World Chess Championship in NY, some would say Sergey Karjakin is tougher than previously expected but the Norwegian needs to win just one game to win the championship.
Along with the honour of defending his title, Carlsen received €550,000 for his troubles. “I would suspect there would be people who are not happy”.
It marked the first time NY had played host to a world title match since 1995, when Garry Kasparov retained his title against Viswanathan Anand on the 107th-floor observatory deck in the south tower of the World Trade Center. In hard times you have been there.
The New York championship did not escape the shadow of East-West rivalry reaching back to the Cold War days when American Bobby Fischer beat Russian Boris Spassky in 1972. When the applause and jubilation from assembled fans and the press died down, the elder Carlsen was both pleased and relieved. This win has made Carlsen a victor for the third on the row following up his previous wins in the year 2013 and 2014. Carlsen’s game impressed mostly through the evening, but he also made mistakes.
About the tie-break, Carlsen said: “I think it’s 50-50”.
He could not do so, with Carlsen making sure of glory with a stylish queen sacrifice to ensure a devastating checkmate. “That move will be remembered forever”, Ashley said.
“It’s one of the highest-quality matches on both sides”, Lev Alburt, a grandmaster who has followed championship matches since 1954, told the New York Times. Only Carlsen and Karjakin rely on unaugmented human intelligence, NYT says.
The event is expected to attract record viewership across the world as chess is a popular indoor sport in many countries including India.
Reigning world chess champion Magnus Carlsen is not afraid of his Russian challenger Sergey Karjakin but is fearful of losing his crown, former title holder Anatoly Karpov has said. Karjakin resigned straight away, with checkmate just a move away. But Karjakin has played above himself and his challenge is very much real.
The championship is being held in the United States for the first time since 1995. Their overall score after 12 games played was tied at 6-6 and both Grandmasters went for the series of tie-break games to finally decide on the title. “It was very hard to settle down”. “I didn’t make it work”. The runner-up will walk away with a consolation prize of 400,000 euros.
The first seven games ended in a stalemate, wherein each player shared half a point each, before the Russian struck with black pieces in the eighth game to lead-in the match (4.5-3.5) after the Norwegian gave multiple opportunities to his foe and gambled in the hope of a desired winning result.
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Magnus Carlsen is the face of dominance in world chess.
