2017 Champions Showdown, Day 5: Carlsen Obliterates Ding to Win the Match

Is "obliterates" too strong a word? If so, then just barely. Ding Liren won the first of today's 10-minute games, playing terrific chess, and then he scored just half a point in the remaining seven games. Ding is a candidate, the #10 player in the world, a former blitz #1 and the #3 player at the start of the match. No matter: after his one win Carlsen won the next four, and after a draw finished with two more wins.

It was just an awesome performance by the world champion, who clinched match victory with a day to go and pushed his blitz rating to a crazy 2974. It's not so unusual to read something like that in the context of nine round round-robins, but in this case there are 12 games left. Again, no matter: with his insane 19.5-4.5 victory today his overall score is 50-18; he in fact clinched victory with his win in today's penultimate game.

Apparently tomorrow's games won't be rated - FIDE's rule is that match games played after one side has clinched victory won't be rated, so the only question is whether either player will demonstrate much intensity or motivation tomorrow. It's amazing that as bad as the Nakamura-Topalov beatdown was - expectedly - this was even more decisive. Incredible. It will be interesting to see if Carlsen can carry over this form to the next Grand Chess Tour event, when the players return to classical time controls. If so, he may yet be able to make a run at 2900.