Slashdot Mirror
After 12 Draws and a Day of Tiebreakers, Magnus Carlsen Beats Fabiano Caruana To Win World Chess Championship (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: After three weeks, 12 straight draws and a day of tiebreakers, Norway's Magnus Carlsen finally retained the world chess championship in London on Wednesday with a victory against Fabiano Caruana (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), his American challenger. Carlsen's victory came in what amounted to sudden-death chess: a scheduled series of four so-called rapid games in which the players started with 25 minutes to make their moves. The speedier pace of the games, after the far more deliberate matchups of the previous three weeks, meant players were more likely to make blunders. And that increased the chance of a victory by one player. Carlsen won the first two games, then closed out Caruana in Game 3.
Caruana, 26, was bidding to become the first American champion since Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky to win the world title in 1972. The famously cantankerous Fischer forfeited his title in 1975 amid a dispute with the world chess federation, and the sport has been dominated by Russians and Eastern Europeans in the decades since then. The tiebreaker result was not a shock. While Carlsen, 27, and Caruana, 26, are closely matched in longer conventional chess games, known as classical chess, Carlsen had been considered the favorite in the tiebreaker because he has had better rapid chess results than Caruana. "It was the first time in the history of the world championship, which dates to the 1800s, that regulation play ended with every game a draw," the report notes.
Caruana, 26, was bidding to become the first American champion since Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky to win the world title in 1972. The famously cantankerous Fischer forfeited his title in 1975 amid a dispute with the world chess federation, and the sport has been dominated by Russians and Eastern Europeans in the decades since then. The tiebreaker result was not a shock. While Carlsen, 27, and Caruana, 26, are closely matched in longer conventional chess games, known as classical chess, Carlsen had been considered the favorite in the tiebreaker because he has had better rapid chess results than Caruana. "It was the first time in the history of the world championship, which dates to the 1800s, that regulation play ended with every game a draw," the report notes.
From this article:
Carlsen will play as white in Wednesday’s first tiebreak stage after the drawing of lots following Monday’s game: a best-of-four rapid match with 25 minutes for each player with an increment of 10 seconds after each move. (This is where the Norwegian was able to close the show after he was pushed to tie-breakers against Russia’s Sergey Karjakin two years ago in New York.)
If that is not enough to settle matters, they will play up to five mini-matches of two blitz games (five minutes for each player with a three-second increment). If all five mini-matches are drawn, it will come down to one sudden-death Armageddon match in which white receives five minutes, black receives four minutes and both will receive a three-second increment after the 60th move. If that game is drawn, black will be declared the winner.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
From the summary:
It was the first time in the history of the world championship, which dates to the 1800s, that regulation play ended with every game a draw," the report notes.
While that may be true, that is because until recently (1985) the match winner was the first to reach a specific number of wins - 10 in the first World Chess Championship. In 1984-1985, the winner would be the first to 6 wins - but the the match was cancelled after 48 games, including 17 draws in a row. After this, the match was changed to "best of x games" - in the restarted match it was 24 games, now it's down to 12.
"No, my understanding is that he retained his crown in classic chess due to the fact that after an all-draw match in classic chess he won a match in speed chess, validating the OP's statement."
In fact, no, it doesn't. Historically, a challenger in chess must win the champion to take his title: a draw meant the 'statu quo' is to be preserved; the current champion retains his crown, that is. So, compared to past championships, Caruana would have already lost by the end of the "standard" phase, but he got another oportunity at the rapid games phase, which he also lost.