The long awaited win at the world chess championship between the defending champion Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi in the sixth game came today. Carlsen holds one point lead 3.5-2.5 in the best of 14 games.
Since Carlsen-Caruana’s 2018 duel, the World Chess Championship has not seen a win in the classical time control, but the sixth game of the 2021 Championship brought the victory in favor of the defending champion GM Magnus Carlsen. It also came with a record-breaking one hundred and thirty-six moves, the longest ever in the history of the championship.
The defender proved to everyone the reason he is the holder of the title by dropping his valued Queen for his opponents two rooks which pushed the game into an interesting, strength consuming endgame. Magnus Carlsen said at the post match interview that “I thought I should make the game as long as possible so that we would both be as tired as possible when the critical moment came. That turned out to be a good strategy.”
The world champion seems elated by the win, whereas the challenger, GM Ian Nepomniatchchi as expected does not share similar euphoria when he said “Obviously it wasn’t the most pleasant game but, anyway, life goes on. It’s not a big deal.”
Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen grinning from all ears as he drew the first blood, considered the game a tough nut to crack, but he has proven that he has all the strategy it takes to defend his title and as Nigeria IM Balogun Oluwafemi had said in his last interview with the Bruvchess correspondent.
Related Read: 2021 Nigeria Chess Champion—IM Balogun Oluwafemi gives his thoughts about the ongoing World Chess Championship
It seems the Norwegian like all other title holders in time past still has a decade to hold on to it. Even GM Ian Nepomniatchchi indicated thus “Anyway I would say that Magnus managed to capitalize on the very few chances he got. He got this game so that’s very nice for him.”
It was nice seeing this win come historically at the point when the whole world are getting tired of the usual draw. I am also sure the two players has left the world of chess with many puzzles and game analysis to deal with as the Grandmaster Carlsen has done a strange sac which his opponent has not recovered from yet as at the time of filing this report.
Maybe the challenger will return to the drawing ways tomorrow, but he will need to cancel this deficit first. Hopefully, the Russian will bounce back after a good discussion with his second and team, as his fans, and indeed Russia, awaits his resurrection and ascension.
GM Nijat Abasov made game 6 annotations for Lichess.
