The Week in Chess

The World Chess Championship in London still remains deadlocked at 4-4 after 8 of the 12 games. Fabiano Caruana played very sharply against Magnus Carlsen's Sicilian Defence and it seems that he had deeper preparation. Carlsen's preparation ran out, probably between the sharp 14...e4 novelty and 18...g5 which isn't objectively very good. It's harder to say where Caruana's preparation ran out, he still was playing quickly up to and including 20.Bc3.

Here there was a lot of excitement as the Supercomputer Sesse (and not just this one) assessed the position as winning for white. Following 20...Bf5 Caruana thought for about 35 minutes before playing the computer recommended 21.c5, after the game he said that he thought this was the critical continuation but that the position was very "concrete", that is very precise moves had to be found for him to prove an advantage.

He added "The position - I never felt was winning or anything". Carlsen was well behind on the clock and played 21...Nxf3+ 22.Qxf3 dxc5 quickly.

The key moments of the game followed. 23.Rae1 seems stronger than 23.Rad1 and after 24.h3 the computers were already thinking that white was only a little better (Caruana was trying to treat his advantage "positionally"). Carlsen held the position quite comfortably after that and the game was agreed drawn on move 38.

The tension is now ratcheting up as each player realises any error could really be fatal to their chances in the match. By the time of the press conference Carlsen looked very much happier than Caruana. One should not forget that computer lines are not human ones and while it was clear white was better it wasn't that easy to see why the computers had a winning advantage assessment even to very strong players.

Score Carlsen 4 - Caruana 4.

Rest day Tuesday 20th Nov

Game 9 Carlsen vs Caruana Wednesday 21st Nov 3pm.