Dubai, December 10
Norway’s Magnus Carlsen retained his world chess crown in Dubai on Friday, claiming his fifth title by completing a comprehensive 7.5-3.5 victory against Ian Nepomniachtchi.
The 31-year-old Norwegian benefited from a blunder by his Russian challenger to win his fourth game of the match, with the black pieces, to take an unassailable lead in the best-of-14 contest.
“I didn’t expect it go quite like this. I think it was just a very good professional performance overall. No regrets at all, just very satisfied,” said Carlsen.
Nepomniachtchi lost after a blunder on the 23rd move, when he attacked Carlsen’s rook. Carlsen sacrificed his rook but his next move left Nepomniachtchi’s queen badly exposed.
Asked to assess his performance over the course of the match, Carlsen said: “You can point that things you could have done different in every game of course, but overall I’m happy with my play, very proud of my effort in the sixth game, and that sort of laid the foundation for everything. The final score is probably a bit more lopsided than it could have been, but that’s the way I think some of the other matches also could have gone if I had gotten a lead.”
“No ideas,” said Nepomniachtchi on being asked if he could put a finger on what went wrong. “If I would have known what was going on I would surely have fixed it during the match.” “These things which happened here, they have never happened to me at basically any events,” Nepomniachtchi said, referring to his fatal blunders in the eighth, ninth and 11th games. “In my career I lost quite some stupid games but not as many in such a (short) time.” — TNS, agencies
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