On a dramatic day in the seaside German town of Weissenhaus, Magnus Carlsen won the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship—his 21st World Championship title—after defeating Fabiano Caruana in a four-game finale late on Sunday. Carlsen has five classical World Championships besides six World Rapid Championships and nine World Blitz Championships. Now Carlsen adds a world title in the one format that was missing.
“It’s certainly not one of my most convincing wins today,” Carlsen told the YouTube channel of Freestyle Chess after winning the title. “… but it feels great to win on a bit of an off-day. I’m a little disappointed that I couldn’t bring the level that I showed yesterday. It feels great to win but I can do even better.”
Caruana, chasing his first ever World Championship crown in any format, had winning positions in three of the four rapid games in the final against Carlsen, but could convert none. The third game between the pair was particularly chastening for the American grandmaster. For, it was there that he held a winning position over Carlsen but threw it away over the span of six moves to get checkmated instead. Caruana was in a winning position from as early as the 15th move after the Norwegian jumped in to capture Caruana’s knight with his bishop on h4 (15…Bxh4). The capture resulted in a dead lost position for Carlsen, where many players would have resigned. Carlsen opted to fight it out. On the 31st move, Caruana made a blunder with his rook and suddenly the positions were equal again. On the 35th and the 36th moves, Caruana then made two more blunders that resulted in a checkmate.
“Very big drama! It wasn’t chess moves that caused Fabi to lose to Carlsen. It was a psychological crack,” declared chess legend Judit Polgar in her analysis of the finale for the official Freestyle Chess stream. “Caruana basically couldn’t believe that he had a winning position. That kind of winning position against someone like Carlsen. Fabi destroyed himself.”
INTERACTIVE: How Carlsen survived and then won game 3 against Caruana
Carlsen admitted that he knew the game was over, and that defeat was inevitable, but kept fighting regardless. It turned out to be the prudent choice.
“I thought I was doing reasonably well for a long time and then I missed one of his resources and then I reacted poorly. Usually when you get a completely lost position, it happens gradually. But in this case I captured his knight (15…Bxh4) and then I realised he has an in-between check and I can resign. I still had a little bit of hope. At one point when he found some nice moves, I thought this game was over,” Carlsen admitted in an interview with the official broadcast.
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The World No 1 also said that in game 3 there was a point at the end when he knew he could have forced a draw, but opted to push for a win because he could “smell blood”.
“I had been on the ropes for this third game and the second game was not easy either. I thought I was not going to get an easier chance than this. Fortunately, he collapsed in a matter of a few moves. I was very happy with that part: the fact that I was able to psychologically reset and play for a win when I could.
“It is a bit strange when it happens so suddenly that you just go from thinking that your position is completely fine and then it’s just lost, you don’t really have that much time to think about what’s happened. I tried to dig in. There were quite a big of early knockout punches that he missed,” Carlsen said while talking about where his opponent had gone wrong. “I knew that whenever he gets very low on time the quality of his play drops. Very significantly. When he was giving me checks at the end it seemed that he was getting more and more frustrated.”
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Other results
In the match for the third place at the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship, Uzbekistan’s Nodirbek Abdusattorov defeated German grandmaster Vincent Keymer while Hans Niemann defeated Arjun Erigaisi 2–0 to claim fifth place. Levon Aronian won his Armageddon against Javokhir Sindarov (Uzbekistan) to take seventh place.
Carlsen also said that his biggest challenge on Sunday—something that could have prevented him from adding a 21st World Championship crown to his kitty—was physical exhaustion.
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“In the fourth game, I could feel at the start that I was so exhausted. It’s been a few long days here and a few long days in London before that (for the Speed Chess Championship). I didn’t have any strength left whatsoever. But I could tell that he wasn’t really playing that great. It was just a dogfight, honestly.”
Caruana, who will now focus his energies on doing well at the upcoming Candidates tournament with an eye on making it to his second World Championship fight, was in a bit of a shock at the end of the day after missing the best chance of his career of winning a World Championship title.
“That position was easily winning in many ways. Also, very practical ways to do it. Some less practical, but winning ways too. I just didn’t choose any one of them. It’s pretty sour right now,” Caruana admitted. He did add with a grin: “I’ll probably forget about it by tomorrow.”
