Chess’s Biggest Star Is Finally Its Official King

Chess’s Biggest Star Is Finally Its Official King November 22, 2013, 5:27 PM
By Jonathan Zalman

The legacy of Magnus Carlsen, today crowned the undisputed king of the chess world, is just now beginning to take shape. Carlsen continues to shatter not only perceptions of chess players, but also the annals of the ancient game. Today the handsome, Seinfeld-and-ski-jumping-loving Norwegian chess player can call himself 2013 FIDE World Champion, the second youngest to do so.

To celebrate, Carlsen’s team threw him into a swimming pool in a full suit—the same one he had donned just a short time before at the chess table opposite Viswanathan Anand, the 4-time defending champion, during the 10th and deciding game of the match—and the young chess star extended his arms up to the sky agrin.

Carlsen, a week shy of his 23rd birthday, won the best-of-12 match by a tally of 6.5-3.5 (1 point per victory, 0.5 for a draw). Only Garry Kasparov (also 22) accomplished the feat at a younger age.

Carlsen walks away with nearly $1.5 million in prize money, a small sum in comparison of what’s to come for the precocious champion who is already a clothing model and media darling.

As Carlsen fielded questions from a fervent press after Friday’s victory, Anand was absent from the podium having exited stage left moments before. Playing in front of a hometown crowd in Chennai, India’s first grandmaster, beloved in chess circles, failed to win even one game outright against Carlsen.

“Today was a kind of microcosm of the match,” said Anand, known familiarly as “Vishy.” “I was just trying to keep playing and then at some point I started to make mistakes. I simply blundered.”

Carlsen came into the match as the favorite because of his performance as the world’s top-rated player for nearly two-and-a-half years; he has the highest Elo rating in history.

“It feels good,” Carlsen said with a firm smile after the match had been decided. “At some point I started to settle in. We were playing to my strengths towards the end.”

One of Carlsen’s strengths, says Susan Polgar, a Hungarian-American grandmaster and commentator at the match, is his fighting spirit. Polgar points to Game 3 as a turning point for momentum in the match when Anand offered Carlsen a draw in a seemingly dead drawn position.

“Where most people would automatically just shake hands, Magnus decided to play on to the bitter end until there were only four pieces left on the board, including the two kings,” said Polgar. “[Carlsen] wanted to show that he dictates the pace and when there will be a draw or will not.”

The match was deadlocked at two points apiece after each of the first four games ended in a draw. A highlight was Game 4, a six-hour, 64-move affair, in which Carlsen began to take his grinding form.

From Game 4 on, [Carlsen] took the initiative,” said Polgar. “He’s brilliant.”

“Game 4 gave me a really good feeling,” said Carlsen. “I felt it was a good fighting game.” He added: “[Anand] was just as nervous and vulnerable as I was.”

In Game 5, Carlsen finally broke through with a signature stamina-driven win that involved a rook ending. “[It] was a heavy blow,” said Anand. “I really hoped not to be afraid of him in long games but simply match him. This was not to be.” Later Anand said that game was not just a “low point” but that he was “depressed.”

Carlsen would go on to win Game 6 as well in similar fashion.

“Anand lost games five and six through being unable to avoid the kind of mistakes that have plagued his game recently. There was no way back,” said Mark Crowther, editor of The Week in Chess. “Carlsen just presse[d] him so hard.”

“Those mistakes, if you wouldn’t have a computer next to you,” said Polgar of Anand’s apparent misplay, “I don’t think they are such clear blunders.”

Anand continued to fight, but never recovered. After the opponents drew Games 7 and 8—both relatively shorts tilts—Anand worked to create an unbalanced position in game 9 playing with white. But Carlsen correctly calculated later that he could not find an obvious checkmate, despite the attack, and soon he soon promoted a pawn to a queen, putting Anand’s king in check. A defensive blunder by Anand on move 28 (Nf1) sealed the deal for the Norwegian.

“It was like watching a piece of art,” says Polgar. “A masterpiece in the making.”

Full article here.