By the 100th move, Nepomniachtchi’s chair was shaking visibly, another seismic event. It was some 30 moves before another pawn was moved, and no pieces were captured, as the bigger guns bobbed and weaved, darting in and out of traffic, and with similar consequences should they not look both ways. On the 80th move, Carlsen traded one of his rooks for a pawn and bishop, and the survivors were as follows: a rook, a knight and three pawns for Carlsen a queen and one pawn for Nepomniachtchi.
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With his king safely tucked away and some time on his clock, Carlsen was free to investigate his attacking chances once again.Ī painstaking dance unfolded over dozens of moves, as a few pawns were gobbled up and pieces rerouted to just the right places.
They each made their 40th moves with mere seconds to spare, the computer once again displayed 0.00, and the clocks wound to an hour apiece.īut four hours into play, there was still a rich, fraught endgame to come. (Carlsen said after the game that this idea hadn’t been on his radar.) Shortly thereafter, Nepomniachtchi ought to have grabbed a free pawn but did not. Carlsen was the first to see real winning chances, but he missed a chance to spring a fruitful long-distance attack on the black king. During this feverous stretch of time trouble that followed here, however, the computer twitched like a seismograph during the Big One.Ĭlocks draining, Carlsen and Nepomniachtchi were locked in an intricate battle for space and material in the board’s southwest corner - an asymmetric skirmish, queen and bishop versus rooks and knight. By the 35th, both his and Nepomniachtchi’s clocks were under five minutes.įor so much of the match, the computer evaluation had sat level near 0.00, representative of the dead-equal and nearly perfect chess played by both grandmasters.
By the 30th move, Carlsen’s clock had drifted below 10 minutes. If a player’s clock reaches 0:00, they lose. Players begin world championship games with a bank of two hours - they gain a bonus hour only once they make their 40th move. The players’ clocks ticked while they contemplated how it might all crash down. Carlsen accepted these terms, and the imbalanced position teetered precariously on the board. Nepomniachtchi soon offered a trade of his own - one white queen for two blacks rooks. Two entrenched, well-equipped armies stared at each other across an empty no-man’s land in the middle of the board - the silence before the fury and long war of attrition to come. A few moves later, Nepomniachtchi declined to trade queens, again demonstrating his tenacity. Nepomniachtchi’s 11th move was universally awarded an exclamation point - with “11 … b5!” he successfully navigated the opening with the black pieces and bared his teeth, showing his own willingness to do battle.
Chess analysts offer a variety of punctuation for notable moves. Generally, we are all witnessing an extremely high level of preparation and accuracy, with Magnus not being able to take the lead, and Nepo pushing safely to the tiebreaks, where he is even more comfortable.Ĭhess enthusiasts couldn’t hide their frustration nor for the Opening, which was listed in the chess manuscripts of the late 1500s, nor for the fourth consecutive and almost indifferent draw.Nepomniachtchi declined the pawn and offered his own piece of aggression.
“That’s the state of modern chess,” Carlsen said on this matter. What the World Champion had in mind was some ‘Insanely complicated’ positions that could have resulted from his new idea on move 18, but Nepo’s choices prevented them. GM Fabiano Caruana has used this opening as one of his most reliable ways to draw against the World Champion.īefore the beginning of the Championship, Carlsen had openly stated that he would push through the first games, but as we can see this didn’t work out quite accurately. The – also called – Russian Defence was also 2018 Challenger’s choice. The Challenger decided to start the game with the Petroff, a solid opening which he used at the Candidates Tournament against GM Wang Hao, and eventually, it won him the tournament.