A peaceful draw was widely predicted for Saturday in the World Chess Championship — a respite just hours after Game 6, the longest game in the history of the championship and the first decisive result in the event in over five years. And the two players delivered: Magnus Carlsen, the defending world chess champion, maintained […]
Ian Nepomniachtchi took off his blazer on the third move, a record-fast time, and he played with a captured chess piece like it was a fidget spinner. Across the table from him in a glass box in Dubai sat Magnus Carlsen, the world No. 1. The two, locked in the middle of a weeks-long battle […]
Your diligent chess correspondent spent the morning watching some chess. Magnus Carlsen of Norway and Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia (not pictured) are in fact in Dubai battling for the 2021 World Chess Championship. The grandmasters — the world Nos. 1 and 5, respectively — had both stepped away from the board and into their private […]
Since Friday, Norway’s Magnus Carlsen and Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi have been spending their days in a glass box in Dubai, vying for the 2021 World Chess Championship. It’s a title that challenger Nepomniachtchi is hoping to wrest from Carlsen, the world No. 1, who has held it since 2013. But neither has yet yielded any […]
A game, the philosopher Bernard Suits wrote, is “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” It’s one thing to shove a fistful of chess pieces across the board to surround the enemy king. It’s quite another to get them there in accordance with the ancient game’s intricate rules, and while your grandmaster opponent tries to […]