The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen has won the FIDE World Chess Championship in Chennai by a score of 6.5-3.5 against defending champion Viswanathan Anand. Carlsen required just 10 of the 12 scheduled games to win the title. It is too early to talk of the Carlsen era as defence of his title is scheduled in less than 12 months but this is the culmination of Carlsen's domination of the game. First Carlsen has cemented himself firmly as world number one, then somewhat nervously he navigated the qualification via a Candidates tournament and in India he didn't seem to have to exert himself to the maximum in becoming world chess champion. It seems entirely possible he will keep the title for some time.

Carlsen had an overwhelming lead going into what turned out to be the final game. A short perfunctory affair might have been expected but instead it turned into a real struggle. Anand finally played his old favourite the Sicilian Defence and Carlsen played his expected Moscow Variation against it. Anand described the game as "I thought today was a kind of microcosm of the whole match" in that "at some point I started to make mistakes" with 28...Qg5 allowing 29.e5 and after 29...Ne8 Carlsen almost immediately made the capture 30.exd6 which he thought was just winning but he "missed something simple". Instead if Carlsen had spent a bit more time he would have seen 30.Nc3 would have given him a huge advantage Carlsen said this mistake "doesn't feel very important now" afterwards. Carlsen pressed for some time into a knight ending which turned out to be very complicated and at least on the outside seemed to give him at least some losing chances. In the end Carlsen had to trade into a queen ending where he had pawns and Anand a knight. This was drawn after a few more moves on move 65 with only a knight remaining.

Anand thought his chances in the match were down to being able to avoid a lot of mistakes and that execution of any match strategy was entirely dependent on that. He was happy to escape with a draw in game four but his first loss in game five came as a big setback and for him this was the turning point in the match. For Carlsen he felt that after a nervy first two games the play in games three and especially four gave him the confidence that the match wouldn't require him to do much more than he was already doing in winning tournaments. Carlsen won games five and six and also yesterday's game nine all after major blunders by Anand although both players pointed out that Carlsen had some responsibility in getting Anand to make them.

At the final handshake the players signed the board they played game 10 on and Carlsen remained on the stage a little longer than Anand eventually leaving not with a punch to the air as Kasparov famously did in 1985 but with a broad smile.

22 year old Carlsen went from amateur to champion in only 10 years. Carlsen (22 years and 357 days) is the 16th undisputed World Chess Champion and the second youngest behind Kasparov (22 years and 210 days). The split between Kasparov and FIDE in 1993 makes all numbers in this area controversial, the Indian press release of champions names the maximum 20 champions in which case FIDE's 2002 champion Ruslan Ponomariov would be youngest at 18 years old.

Full account of this game and the match will follow over the next days.

"Clearly, he (Carlsen) dominated the match. Full credit to him," - Anand

"I would like to think I can take some responsibility for those blunders, I just play and people crack under the pressure, even in World Championships." - Carlsen

GM Ian Rogers in India writing for the USCF

Game and press conference video below.