Chess: Carlsen secures record but draws threaten chances of victory at Wijk
Magnus Carlsen’s streak of 113 games without defeat is a new landmark in the 29-year-old Norwegian’s career but its climax has been six lacklustre draws at Wijk aan Zee which threaten to derail his impressive record there.
Carlsen’s halved games in the first four rounds completed an unbeaten sequence which broke Sergei Tiviakov’s 2004-05 record of 110 against weaker opposition. Arguably the champion’s splendid run at the elite Tata Steel Wijk tournament of seven victories and a second place in eight attempts is a still more outstanding achievement.
Carlsen has been struggling and his Wijk record is in serious danger. His fifth draw, scored on Thursday against his former aide Daniil Dubov, followed a similar pattern to his four previous halves. Dubov stood better for most of the game, despite playing Black against Carlsen’s favourite 3 Bb5 Sicilian. After his fourth draw, against Jorden van Foreest, 20, Carlsen quipped “I’m saving bad positions every game. What’s not to like?”
In Friday’s sixth round Carlsen halved as White in only 28 moves and less than two hours’ play with his old rival Fabiano Caruana, America’s world No 2 and Carlsen’s 2018 title challenger.
Nine points from 13 games is the normal winning score at Wijk, a total which Carlsen achieved in 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019. To reach it in 2020 he now needs five wins and two draws.
Meanwhile Alireza Firouzja, 16, who recently quit Iran due to its policy of banning games against Israeli opponents and is widely tipped as a future world champion, scored another important win when he outplayed the Netherlands draw specialist, Anish Giri, in a delicately skilled endgame.
After five of the 13 rounds Firouzja (stateless) and Wesley So (US) led with 3.5/5, followed by three players on 3/5 and another five, including Carlsen, on 2.5/5. Firouzja v Carlsen, eagerly awaited following their controversial game at the World Blitz, will be in round nine on Tuesday.
Even now, with Carlsen’s record seemingly done and dusted, there is a rival grandmaster claimant. GM Bogdan Lalic, who represents Croatia but is a longtime English resident, played 175 games unbeaten between September 2010 and October 2011, including 151 against opponents with official Fide ratings.
The quality of Lalic’s opponents was lower even than Tiviakov’s, and he agreed many short draws with weaker rivals. Once the player sitting on the adjacent board had difficulty writing down the long name of his own opponent on the score sheet, and by the time he had done so Lalic had agreed his draw and departed.
At the end of the 13-month period Lalic’s Fide rating was lower than when it started. His performance is not in the same league as Carlsen, nor with Ding Liren’s earlier 100-game streak, but Lalic is a solid GM, currently unbeaten after seven rounds of the Prague Open, and there is no official requirement of the parameters for an unbeaten record.
Almost everyone attributes the longest winning streak of 19 or 20 games to Bobby Fischer at the 1970 interzonal and his 1971 candidates matches against Mark Taimanov, Bent
Larsen and Tigran Petrosian (one opponent, Oscar Panno, resigned on move one as a schedule protest).
The longest top level winning streak is actually 25 games by the first official world champion Wilhelm Steinitz. It took him nine years, Steinitz won his final 16 games at Vienna 1873, crushed Joseph Blackburne 7-0 in their 1876 match, then won his first two games at Vienna 1882.
A record of a different kind was created this week when Quique Setién became the new Barcelona manager. The 61-year-old has played chess at a sufficiently high level, although more than 20 years ago, to have an official Fide international rating of 2055, expert standard.
His game in a 2002 simultaneous display by the then world champion Vlad Kramnik has been preserved and shows that Setién knew theory well and kept the Russian legend at bay until he was eventually overrun by a crushing attack.
Setién very likely ranks as the alltime chess No 1 among football managers, with his only rival Ossie Ardiles of Tottenham and Argentina. The competition is much stronger among professional GMs and IM players, where Carlsen’s former coach Simen Agdestein, Bela Soos of Romania, and Vlastimil Jansa of the former Czechoslovakia all played soccer internationally.
In 1992 when Agdestein competed at Hastings after drawing a match 2-2 against Anatoly Karpov, he stated in an interview with the Guardian that he had found it harder to play against the ex-world champion than against the legendary Italian defender Franco Baresi, who had been Agdestein’s direct opponent on his international debut.
3654 1...g4+! 2 Qxg4 (if 3 Kxg4 Qf5 mate) Qf5! and Black won the pawn ending after 3 h5 c4! 4 h6 Qxg4+ 5 Kxg4 Kf6 6 h7 Kg7 and Black’s b pawn queens.