Magnus Carlsen is in trouble in a three-day world championship final in Oslo this weekend. The Norwegian is meeting America’s Wesley So in a $125,000 head-to-head for the first official global title in Fischer Random chess and he trailed 1.5-7.5 after the opening rounds.
Earlier Carlsen comfortably beat his old rival Fabiano Caruana 12.5-7.5 in the semi-final. They are playing best of 12 games at varying time limits where the slower games count for two or three points. Carlsen won with a day to spare without the need for the five-minute blitz games or the Armageddon tiebreak.
Fischer Random, devised by Bobby Fischer 25 years ago, has 960 possible starting positions of the back row pieces and is fast gaining popularity among elite grandmasters. The huge mass of opening theory is avoided and there are fewer draws compared with classical chess.
In a game where the queens started on f1 and f8 with bishops at a1 and h8, Caruana opened 1 g3, which was countered by d5 2 b3 e6 3 Qh3?! g5! 4 Bxh8 Rxh8 5 0-0 h5! Carlsen said later “This is why we like Fischer Random. You play g5 and h5, and suddenly your position is great. It adds a new dimension.”
So far Black has done better than in normal classical chess, and Carlsen has a view that: “You have a little more information since you go second. Usually in chess that’s not positive, but in Fischer Random we don’t really know how to play the opening. Maybe people also feel too much of an entitlement as White, they feel they have to be better and underestimate Black’s counterplay.”
The free-to-watch live final continues online on chess.com/tv and twitch.tv/chess, starting at 4pm on Friday and Saturday, where viewers can study Carlsen and So up close with full coverage and move-by-move commentary.
England’s team, who won silver at the world championships in March, were again in medal contention this week in the European championships at Batumi, Georgia.
In round eight (of nine) England’s chances against the No 1 seeds, Russia, deteriorated in the fourth hour when Luke McShane’s defensive position crumbled under attack from Nikita Vitiugov and the Englishman lost decisive material.
But then David Howell drew with Kirill Alekseenko, Gawain Jones recovered from the verge of defeat against Maxim Matlakov while Michael Adams on top board nursed an extra pawn to victory against Dmitry Andreikin to make the score England 2 Russia 2.
Scores after eight of the nine rounds were Ukraine and Russia 13, England 12, Armenia, Germany and Croatia 11. So England have a medal chance in Saturday’s final round, which starts early, at 7am in London.
Russia’s Daniil Dubov, the world rapid champion and aide to Carlsen in his title match against Caruna, scored the most brilliant win of the Euroteams, and one of the outstanding wins of the year in Russia v Germany when he chased the black king all the way across the board and checkmated it inside the white camp.
3643 (Black moves first) 1 Kb2 Rd5 2 Kc3 Rc5+ 3 Kd4 Nb3 mate. Composer Pal Benko, who died in August at 91, was twice a world championship candidate, He had another chance in 1970 but gave up his interzonal place to Bobby Fischer, who went on to win the world crown. The Benko Gambit 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 b5 is named after him and he was also a brilliant and prolific composer of offbeat puzzles.