#magnus-carlsen

#magnus-carlsen

Magnus Carlsen, the world No 1, visited Central London last weekend and won the chess.com speed championship for the fourth time in a row. The Norwegian, 35, defeated France's Alireza Firouzja, 22, by 15-12 after a three-hour struggle. Last year in Paris the same two players met, but Carlsen's winning margin was a much wider 23.5-7.5. The format for speed chess is 90 minutes of five minutes blitz, 60 minutes of three minutes blitz, and 30 minutes of one minute bullet. All the segments had additional increments of one second per move.

One year ago, the world No 1, Magnus Carlsen, and the global chess body, Fide, were at loggerheads after the Norwegian was penalised for wearing jeans at the World Rapid in New York. The 35-year-old also agreed to share the World Blitz crown despite a rule requiring an outright winner. Relations worsened further when Fide opposed Carlsen's wish for the new Freestyle circuit winner to be called a world champion, he announced that he was done with Fide.

He was briefly in danger early on when, sick, he lost his first game to his old rival Fabiano Caruana, saying: I'm quite aware that I'm just not able to think as clearly as I need on a day like this. The 5/2 blitz tiebreaks brought a further challenge: I had to tell myself several times, make a move, c'mon, what are you doing.

A little over three years ago, the greatest chess player of all-time lost to a swaggering young American grandmaster, self-ejected from an important tournament, and kicked off the biggest and strangest cheating scandal chess has ever seen. The story of Magnus Carlsen's quixotic war against Hans Niemann gripped the chess world for years. Back in 2022, Carlsen was on top of the world, lording over every format of chess and winning most major tournaments even after announcing his plans to abdicate his world championship.

Levon Aronian, at 42 the oldest in the tournament, scored what he described as one of the crown jewels of his career to win the $200,000 first prize at the Las Vegas leg of the Freestyle Grand Slam last weekend.

Winning by half a point after a lot of results go my way doesn't feel like a statement, was how Magnus Carlsen summed up the Stavanger tournament.

"Every time I lose games, it's a little bit of a story in the chess world, so I prefer to have it happen as seldom as possible."

"Overall, The World has played very, very sound chess," Carlsen praised the team, acknowledging their tenacity that ultimately led to a draw after 32 moves.