The question can now be asked: is Magnus Carlsen the strongest player of all time ahead of Kasparov, Fischer, Alekhine, Capablanca and others?
By literally crushing by 4 to 0, and 7 draws, his challenger, the Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi, the Norwegian grandmaster, who has just celebrated his 30th birthday, has shown that he is more than ever alone on the top of the planet chess.
Watch the videoAnalysis of the match Carlsen-Nepomniachtchi
The Russian challenger however had an illusion during the first five games, showing great resistance.
Obviously very well prepared in the openings, Ian Nepomniachtchi was able in this first phase to thwart the variants of Carlsen's laboratories who, cocorico oblige, recruited for a long time in his team a talented theorist, the great French master Laurent Fressinet.
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A titanic 6th part
After this "warm-up lap", Carlsen decided to speed things up and deliver a decisive blow in Part 6 by forcing his opponent into a real fight to the death, a merciless battle of brain attrition.
The game will be titanic: 136 moves, eight hours of play and magnificent transpositions of intelligence between the middle of the game and a final knight, turn and two pawns against a single lady that Nepomniachtchi ended up losing under the blows of the " Thor of chess ”.
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This first victory will have had a double consequence: the Russian truly exhausted by this marathon will then be unrecognizable while Carlsen, on the contrary galvanized, whose strategic approach is already usually free of mistakes, will quite simply win without hitting three of the last five. parts of the match and permanently knock out his opponent.
Magnus Carlsen, now five-time world champion, will retain his title for two years.
His next challenge, however, may be much more difficult because he could face the French prodigy Alireza Firouza, who at barely 18 ... is already world No. 2.
The first part of the match with live commentary on
Figaro Live
