Chess super Grand Master, Magnus Carlsen of Norway, for the third time in his career holds the Blitz, Rapid, and Classic Championship title at the same time.
All time great chess player
This is an amazing achievement because no one else has ever even held both the Rapid and Blitz title in the same year. Magnus continues to impress with his intuitive and innovative game play and strategies. Magnus’ first day was mediocre, he was tied for first with several other players and wasn’t making great plays. However, the second day was looking slightly better, he was making stronger moves and finding his footing, after several tough matches though, he was still tied for first. After multiple days of facing the strongest Grand Masters in the world, Carlsen emerged victorious and claimed the last title he needed to hold all 3 simultaneously for the third time.
Carlsen became a Grand Master at the age of 13 and world champion at age 22. A chess prodigy, he also was the youngest person to join the 2800 elo club at the age of 18. He has been World Champion for the past ten years, but won’t defend his title this coming April. He has the all-time highest elo rating ever at 2,882 elo points.
Review of the chess tournament
According to Wikipedia’s page on The World Chess Championship, “The first event recognized as a world championship was the 1886 match between the two leading players in the world, Wilhelm Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort. Steinitz won, becoming the first world champion.” The International Chess Federation (FIDE) took control of the tournament from 1948 to 1993. During that time, a new challenger would be selected every three years. However, starting in 1993 FIDE lost control of the championship. This continued for the next 13 years. In 2006 the title unified and has remained that way under the FIDE.
“The World Championship Match consists of 14 games. The player who scores 7.5 points or more wins the Match, and no further games are played. If the score after 14 games is equal, the winner is decided on a tiebreak.”
Besides a few warm-up days, Carlsen had a great series of games, at one point he astoundingly showed up late to a game because he was skiing, he only had one minute left on the clock but in an incredible turn of events he managed to checkmate his opponent. This shows the true power of Carlsen, he shows no sign of slowing down in the competitive scene either, besides the upcoming World Champion title match.
Future tournaments
However, Carlsen put his World Champion title up uncontested in the upcoming tournament, he has declined to defend his title. The current contenders for the title are, Ding, Liren of China, an extremely strong super Grand Master and Ian Nepmniachtchi of Russia, another very strong super Grand Master. The only issue is that this tournament may not even happen, it is announced to be in April, a short 90 days away. Usually the competitions are announced almost a year in advance. They don’t even have sponsors yet and usually the sponsors are from Russian companies. Due to the current war in Ukraine, it isn’t likely they will get a sponsor, they also don’t even have a venue for the event.
