World Championship, Rapid Tiebreaks: Carlsen Wins 3-0 to Retain His Title

First it was seemingly impossible for anyone to win a game, and then it was almost impossible for anyone not to. Or rather, for Magnus Carlsen not to. After 12 consecutive draws to open the match, Carlsen blanked Fabiano Caruana 3-0 in the playoff to retain his championship title for at least another two years.

In the first game, the evaluation see-sawed between a serious advantage for Carlsen and equality (but not a safe equality) for Caruana until a final error in a rook and pawn ending cost the American the game.

Game 2 was another Sveshnikov Sicilian, continuing the debate from game 12, and again it was Carlsen who felt more at home in the complicated position than Caruana. Caruana's 21.c5 was rash, but he still would have been in the game had he played 26.Bd4. Instead, he played 26.c7 and resigned just two moves later, about to lose tons of material.

Caruana did his best to make a fight out of it in game 3. He managed to keep the tension and achieve a playable position, while Carlsen did his job and kept things under control. A draw was the logical result, but the need for Caruana to avoid the draw at all practically all costs led him to make too many concessions, and Carlsen made it three for three in the tiebreaks. (The games, with my abbreviated commentary, are here.)

Carlsen remains the champ, and Caruana will be automatically seeded into the next Candidates, when he can try again. In the last three cycles he has gone one step further than the one before, so maybe next time he will follow in the footsteps of Vassily Smyslov, Boris Spassky, Garry Kasparov, and Viswanathan Anand by bouncing back from a loss (or a non-win) in his first world championship match to a success the next time around. We'll see, but for now, congratulations to Magnus Carlsen!