World Chess Championship 2018
The World Chess Championship 2018 was a match between the reigning world champion since 2013, Magnus Carlsen, and the challenger Fabiano Caruana to determine the World Chess Champion. The 12-game match, organised by FIDE and its commercial partner Agon, was played at The College in Holborn, London, between 9 and 28 November 2018. The games were broadcast on worldchess.com and by NRK.
The classical time-control portion of the match ended with 12 consecutive draws, the only time in the history of the world chess championship that all classical games have been drawn. On 28 November, rapid chess was used as a tie-breaker; Carlsen won three consecutive games to retain his title and became four-time world champion.
Candidates Tournament
Caruana qualified as challenger by winning the 2018 Candidates Tournament. This was an eight-player, double round-robin tournament played in Berlin on 10–28 March 2018.Qualified players
Players qualified for the Candidates Tournament as follows :| Player | Age | Rating | Rank | Qualification path | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sergey Karjakinnowrap| ResultsChampionship matchThe Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana was held from 9 to 28 November 2018 in London, United Kingdom, at the Cochrane Theatre of The College in Holborn.Match regulationsThe match was organised in a best-of-12-games format. The time control for the games was 100 minutes for the first 40 moves, an additional 50 minutes added after the 40th move, and then an additional 15 minutes added after the 60th move, plus an additional 30 seconds per move starting from move 1. Players were not permitted to agree to a draw before Black's 30th move.The tie-breaking method consisted of the following schedule of faster games played on the final day in the following order, as necessary:
Previous head-to-head recordPrior to the match, Caruana and Carlsen had played 33 games against each other at classical time controls, of which Carlsen won 10 and Caruana 5, with 18 draws. The most recent game, during the 2018 Sinquefield Cup tournament, resulted in a draw.Alternative logoThe World Chess Federation also showcased an "alternative logo", which depicts two figures with overlapping legs holding a chessboard. The image received controversy for appearing provocative and even "sexy". When the head of World Chess, Ilya Merenzon, was asked to speak on the topic, he said that "it's about two people fighting", but later added that "it would be nice to bring a little bit of sexual appeal into chess".Organisation and locationThe match was held under the auspices of FIDE, the world chess federation, with the organisation rights belonging to Agon, its commercial partner.Following the previous championship match in 2016, the president of FIDE, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, said that the next venue would be in London or somewhere in Asia. Japan, South Korea and Singapore all said they were prepared to host the match. In November 2017, London was revealed as the host. The Chief arbiter was Stéphane Escafre from France, and deputy arbiter was Nana Alexandria from Georgia. The appeal committee was composed of International Grandmasters and was chaired by Alexander Beliavsky with Nigel Short and Jóhann Hjartarson also present. The FIDE Supervisor was Ashot Vardapetyan, an International Arbiter from Armenia. The match took place at The College in Holborn, Central London, an impressive Victorian building with a glass dome on the roof. The interior was refitted for the match to provide an elevated rectangular playing space that was to be sound-proof and set behind unidirectional glass so that the players were separated from the audience: the players could be seen, but they would not see the spectators who stood in near total darkness. To attend the event, ticket prices ranged from £45 to £100. It was also broadcast online, with IM Anna Rudolf and GM Judit Polgár providing commentary. The first move of each game of the match was ceremonially performed by guests invited by the organisers. Among the guests were movie stars Woody Harrelson and Tom Hollander; Ellisiv Reppen, partner of Jan Gustafsson, who was part of Carlsen's team in New York; Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales; Sergey Karjakin, the previous challenger for the chess championship; Daniel Weil, the person who designed the pawn he moved, as well as the rest of pieces and the chessboard; and Lucy Hawking, daughter of physicist Stephen Hawking. For the first five minutes of actual game time, photographers were allowed to remain in the playing space to take photos. Live analysisThe games were analysed live by the Sesse computer, running Stockfish. The computer featured a 20-core 2.3 GHz Haswell-EP CPU, which is significantly more powerful than most personal computers.SecondsThe seconds of the players were revealed after the match. Carlsen was helped by Peter Heine Nielsen, Laurent Fressinet, Daniil Dubov, Jan Gustafsson and Nils Grandelius. Caruana's seconds were Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Ioan-Cristian Chirila, Alejandro Ramirez and Leinier Domínguez.Match preparation video leakOn 13 November 2018, a two-minute video showing Caruana's preparation for the match showing a list of openings, possibly revealing some of Caruana's opening preparation, was uploaded onto the Saint Louis Chess Club's YouTube channel. The video was quickly removed, but screenshots from the video were disseminated on the Internet. They revealed that Caruana's team was focusing on particular games, and openings—openings that deal primarily with how Caruana would defend as Black against 1.d4 or 1.e4; including variations of the Queen's Gambit Declined, Petrov's Defence, and the Grünfeld Defence with a fianchetto.Schedule and resultsDays with games are shaded.
The classical games began each day at 15:00 in London. Classical gamesGame 1: Caruana–Carlsen, ½–½The first game was a marathon draw, lasting 7 hours. At the time, it was the fourth longest game in a world championship, after Game 5 of the 1978 championship, Game 7 of the 2014 championship, and Game 14 of the 1908 championship. Caruana opened with 1.e4, and Carlsen responded with the Sicilian Defence, with Caruana playing the Rossolimo Variation, an opening with which he had lost against Carlsen in 2015. After 15 moves, it was clear that Carlsen had won the opening duel, with White having no clear way to improve his position while Black still had plans. Caruana started to consume a lot of time, but failed to neutralise Carlsen, with the result that Carlsen had a strong position after 30 moves and Caruana was in serious time trouble. Carlsen had a winning position several times between moves 34 and 40 but, despite a significant time advantage, failed each time to find the winning continuation, and after 40...Bxc3 Caruana was able to reach a drawn endgame. Carlsen continued to play for a win but Caruana was able to hold the game, despite being a pawn down in a rook endgame. The players finally agreed to a draw after 115 moves.Game 2: Carlsen–Caruana, ½–½Game 2 began as a Queen's Gambit Declined with Caruana opting for the rarely played 10...Rd8. Caught by surprise, Carlsen avoided the most critical continuation and soon found himself far behind on the clock, a reversal of fortunes from Game 1. Caruana had the clearly-better position, but Carlsen was able to "beg for a draw", successfully navigating to a drawn pawn-down rook endgame. The game was drawn by agreement after 49 moves. |