The Houdini Of Chess Has Escaped Again At The World Championship
By Oliver Roeder
Filed under Chess
The French word for chess is échecs. The French term for Tuesday’s game at the World Chess Championship is déjà vu.
On Monday, world No. 1 and defending champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway fought his challenger, world No. 9 Sergey Karjakin of Russia, in a sweeping 78-move, seven-hour classic worthy of Terrence Malick — a draw for the ages. On a gloomy Tuesday in lower Manhattan, the players sat down in front of 32 pieces and 64 squares and did it again.
The result was a 94-move, six-hour-plus draw that kept the best-of-12 world championship match tied for yet another game. After four games and four consecutive draws, the grandmasters’ tally is now 2-2.1 Whoever gets to 6.5 points first, wins.
Harry Houdini was known to escape after being handcuffed, nailed into a wooden box and dumped into the East River. Sergey Karjakin should now be known for escaping in a suit jacket from a thick glass box just a block away from the East River — a box containing a two chairs, a chess set and the brain of Magnus Carlsen.
But Carlsen eventually slipped, and the peanut gallery, reveling in laptop-aided hindsight, began to doubt his tactics. On his 45th move, Carlsen (black) faced this board.
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