Zero hour is approaching in Dubai. Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi start their 14-game match for the world championship next week, with the opening ceremony on Wednesday and game one on Friday. A $2m prize fund, split 60-40, is at stake, plus the personal, business and national aspirations of the contenders.
Carlsen can strengthen his claim to be the all-time greatest ahead of Garry Kasparov and Bobby Fischer, while Nepo (as he is usually called, and whose first name is pronounced Jan) can be the talisman who creates a new version of the departed Soviet chess empire and its decades of 20th century Russian dominance.
If the classical section finishes 7-7, the result will be settled by tiebreak speed games. Nepo is 31, while Carlsen will reach that age on 30 November, the day of their fourth game. The pair have been rivals since they first met in world under-12 competitions. Nepo did well then, before Carlsen surged ahead in his teens while the Russian’s reputation was “gifted but erratic”. In the past few years Nepo has gained a new focus as a harder working and more consistent player with a dedicated ambition to reach the top.
Carlsen is a prohibitive 1-4 in the betting, although the prevailing grandmaster opinion is that the true odds are more like 60-40. Nepo has been a difficult opponent for the champion, whose match performances have been underwhelming compared to his many tournament victories. Both his 2016 match against Sergey Karjakin and his 2018 series against Fabiano Caruana were tied 6-6 in classical games before Carlsen proved too strong in the speed tie-breaks.
Russia’s hegemony, which started as long ago as 1945 with a crushing radio match victory over the USA, continued for the entire Soviet period with the brief exception of Fischer in 1970-72, and ended only when Vlad Kramnik lost the crown in 2007. Success for Nepo would be perceived in Moscow as a major step to reviving lost glories.
Carlsen believes that classical games, lasting four hours or more, are outmoded because of their too frequent draws and their low entertainment value for the tens of thousands of online fans worldwide who now watch major matches. He would prefer the default time limit to be rapid, two hours or less, fast enough for continuous action yet slow enough to be explained by commentators.
In a pre-match interview with New in Chess, Carlsen said that he regularly contemplates not defending the title, and will talk about that again after the match. Any separatist move by the Meltwater Champions Tour organised by the expanding Play Magnus Group could risk direct confrontation with Fide.
The carefully laid plans of both camps for a winning future look increasingly endangered by a new and rapidly rising threat. The ratings surge of 18-year-old Alireza Firouzja, the Crown Prince and the heir apparent to the global throne, is fuelling the growing enthusiasm of chess fans worldwide for a Carlsen v Firouzja showdown.
Firouzja jumped to world No3 in the live ratings as the former Iranian swept to a 6.5/7 total on his debut for France in the European team championship at Catez, Slovenia. His elegant queen sacrifice against Baadur Jobava on Friday evening induced the Georgian to resign immediately and took Firouzja to just 0.1 of a rating point behind China’s Ding Liren. It gives the teenager every chance of becoming world No 2 in the final two rounds on Saturday and Sunday (2pm start, live and free to watch online).
Firouzja is playing with an ease and confidence which evokes memories of similar late teen surges by Fischer, Garry Kasparov and Carlsen. He is now just 1.1 rating points from matching a feat achieved by Carlsen in 2009, reaching 2800 at 18, and could well do it this weekend..
Firouzja’s overall rating is still 56 points behind Carlsen’s current 2855, but at his present rate of progress the Norwegian’s all-time age record of becoming world No 1 at 19 years and two months is coming into sight.
Firouzja’s fourth-round win in the Euroteams is worth a look due to his startling, even shocking, concept at moves 23 and 24. With his long castled king guarded by pawns at a2 and b2, and the black pawns pushing forward at b5 and a5 backed by Black’s queen and rooks on the c and b files, Firouzja plays 23 b4! and 24 a4! aiming at a technically won endgame. Not exposing your castled king when the opponent’s major pieces are massing for attack is such basic advice that most players would not even consider advancing White’s a and b pawns.
England men continue to struggle at the Euroteams. After six of the nine rounds, the No 5 seeded open team were only on 7/12, despite playing all their matches against countries ranked below No 20. England drew 2-2 with Romania in Friday’s seventh round as Gawain Jones won but the England No 1, Michael Adams, was checkmated by the 20-year-old talent Bogdan-Daniel Deac. A positive is that the team’s youngest player Ravi Haria, 22, qualified as a grandmaster.
England women, seeded a lowly 24th out of 31, lost their first five matches but fought back on Friday with a crushing 3.5-0.5 win against Iceland.
Away from Carlsen, Nepo, and Firouzja, the chess.com online speed championship, a knockout of 16 elite GMs, is providing free entertainment for audiences of up to 20,000. Matches follow a traditional format of 90 minutes of 5+1 blitz (five minutes for the game plus one second per move increment), 60 minutes of 3+1 blitz and 30 minutes of 1+1 bullet.
The standout clash so far has been the five-time US champion Hikaru Nakamura’s 22-10 win against the eight-time Russian champion Peter Svidler, featured in this week’s puzzle and decided by an 11-1 bullet score.
The top three bullet players used to be Carlsen, Firouzja and Nakamura, but Carlsen no longer plays on chess.com because the Play Magnus Group owns the rival chess24.com site, while the world champion himself prefers to bullet on lichess.org under his handle of Dr Nykterstein. Firouzja has abandoned speed chess, at least for a while, as the 18-year-old strives to reach world No 2 over-the-board.
Nakamura’s only defeat in four speed championships has been by Carlsen in the 2017 final. His surprise use of the Orangutan 1 b2-b4 in five of the 3+1 games caused Svidler problems.
The Orangutan got its picturesque name when the GMs at New York 1924 visited the zoo. Savielly Tartakower took a fancy to the ape, and dedicated his next game to it. The opening’s name in Russia is the Sokolsky, after the Belarus master whose book about it showed the dangers for Black of allowing the gambit 1...e5 2 Bb2 f6 3 e4 Bxb4 4 Bc4.
Svidler mostly followed the current preference for 1...e5 2 Bb2 Bxb4 3 Bxe5 Nf6, although it looks odd to exchange a flank pawn for a central pawn so soon.. White’s new plan is 4 c3 Ba5/e7 5 g3, which Carlsen used earlier this year against Anish Giri.
Carlsen alias Dr Nykterstein has continued to defy traditional methods of preparing for a world title match by playing one-minute bullet sessions lasting several hours. Fatigue could affect the second half of the match, but a 7.5-5.5 Carlsen win appears a reasonable forecast.
3790: It’s mate in five by 1...N2h3+! 2 Nxh3 (2 gxf3 Bd4+ is similar) Bd4+ 3 Nf2 (3 Kf1 Rd1 mate) Rd1+ 4 Bf1 Ne2+ 5 Kh1 Rxf1 mate.
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