Really proud of the “huge victory”

Magnus Carlsen dethrones Viswanathan Anand to win world chess title
Carlsen wins three games and draws seven to achieve the victory mark of 6.5 points
Aniek Paul | Arundhati Ramanathan
Wall Street Journal

Kolkata/Chennai: Exactly 27 years to the day Mike Tyson became the youngest at 20 to claim a world heavyweight boxing title with a two-round knockout, another young sportsman acquired legendary status on Friday by cementing his position as the world’s greatest in chess—the equivalent of boxing in mind games—with an equally overwhelming victory over the reigning world champion.

With a draw in the 10th game, Norway’s Magnus Carlsen, 22, outclassed Viswanathan Anand, the champion since 2007, to claim the world chess title by a margin of three wins to nothing with two games to spare—the biggest ever since world championship matches got shortened to 12 games in 2008.

Carlsen didn’t, though, become the youngest world chess champion. Former champion Garry Kasparov stays ahead—he, too, was 22 when he won the title, but was a few months younger.

The enormity of Carlsen’s victory is reminiscent of Tyson’s thrashing of Jamaican-Canadian Trevor Berbick on the night of 22 November 1986 in a bout that lasted only two minutes and 35 seconds. Berbick, who was the last to fight legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, held the World Boxing Council title at that time.

With the whole of Norway celebrating, the country’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg had asked to speak to Carlsen on phone after Friday’s game had ended, the world champion’s manager Espen Agdestein said in an interview.

Starting with Game 4, Carlsen looked as intimidating as Tyson in his prime and had Anand struggling in nearly every game.

Even in Friday’s Game 10, the embattled Indian grandmaster was lucky to escape with a draw after he blundered on the 28th move. It was the first time Carlsen missed anything at all in this match—if he had seized the opportunity, he would have very likely won again.

“I missed something simple…, but it doesn’t feel very important now,” Carlsen said, adding that it was a “nice fight and a worthy end”.

Though he only needed a draw on Friday to clinch the title, the Norwegian grandmaster probed on and settled for a draw after about five hours of battle. Anand recovered and defended accurately, and eventually managed to avoid a fourth defeat.

The vanquished Indian grandmaster admitted that Carlsen dominated the match, describing his own performance as a “big disappointment” as he kept making mistakes in long-drawn battles.

Anand said his biggest challenge was “holding out at the board” because in the run-up to the match, he was making unforced errors in tournament play. His strategy against Carlsen was to avoid that, but it didn’t work, he added.

His loss in Game 5 was, according to Anand, the turning point in the match. It was a long game after four consecutive draws, and Anand made an unforced error after four-and-a-half hours of play. He said it was a “heavy blow” and he got “depressed” there on. He lost Game 6—the second in a row—and the match was all but over at the half-way stage.

Carlsen, however, said Game 4 was the turning point because he got his momentum going from that point. Though he didn’t win, that encounter “gave me a very good feeling and I seized the initiative” because he sensed his opponent could be making mistakes under pressure. He took the first two games to settle into the match, and thereafter “stopped worrying about the occasion”.

His father Henrik Carlsen, who said in a recent interview that he didn’t think of his son as a prodigy, said on Friday that he was really proud of the “huge victory”. He said his job in Chennai was to keep his son “happy” and “agile” during the match, making sure that he didn’t get too stressed.

Asked about his plans, Carlsen’s manager Agdestein said he won’t be playing tournaments until the end of January. Till then, he will take part in brand promotions in the US and some activity to promote chess in US schools, he added.

It isn’t immediately clear when Anand is going to return to competitive chess. He said he needs rest and time “to take stock” of what happened in Chennai, though some of his fans such as former world women’s champion Susan Polgar said she wouldn’t be surprised if Anand challenged Carlsen in a world title match two years later. “He can definitely bounce back,” she said.

“I hope he’ll be back in the candidates (tournament),” said Carlsen, when asked what he thought of Anand’s future as a chess player, referring to the competition through which the challenger to the world title is determined.

Source: http://www.livemint.com