The opening press conference at The College, Holborn, made it obvious that this was not going to be a conventional World Chess Championship match. Chess grandmasters are rarely, if ever, quizzed about their personal relationships with women and “female support”.

If they are, they are unlikely to respond with a deadpan, “Women hate me, I repel them”, as Magnus Carlsen (who has modelled with, and supposedly dated, Liv Tyler) said. Nor would they state ironically that “some of my best friends are women and my mother supports me” as Fabiano Caruana ...</s>Just two classical games to go, and the Magnus Carlsen v Fabiano Caruana world championship match seems inexorably headed towards speed tie-breaks next Wednesday. They are level at 5-5 in the €1m series at The College in Holborn, London after drawing the first 10 games, a deadlock record unequalled since official world championships began in 1886.

Both have had fleeting chances. The biggest fish which got away was in game eight, where Caruana’s opening novelty against the sharp Sveshnikov Sicilian gave him a dominating position where he missed 23 Rae1! Next turn there was still 24 Qh5! instead of the wimpish 24 h3? That would have been not just a win, but a classic to rank alongside Max Euwe’s Pearl of Zandvoort against Alexander Alekhine and Bobby Fischer’s sixth game against Boris Spassky.

What exactly happens if they reach 6-6? The tie-break format is two rapid games at 25 minutes each plus 10 seconds per move increment, then (if they are still level) two blitz games with five minutes each plus three seconds per move. If this finishes 1-1, then there are further two-game blitz mini-matches up to a maximum of 10 blitz games.

Only if they are still level after 12 classical and 12 rapid/blitz games does the fearfully-named Armageddon arrive. White has five minutes, Black four minutes, with a three-second per move increment starting at move 61. An Armageddon draw counts as a win for Black. In theory Carlsen or Caruana could win the match by drawing every classical, rapid and blitz game, then drawing with Black in Armageddon, but from where we are now this is still a very remote long odds against chance.

If it comes to tie-breaks, Carlsen has much higher rapid and blitz ratings than his opponent and has never lost a play-off. In one of the post-game press conferences, Caruana disputed that he is the speed underdog, but it is hard to forget his catastrophic 25 defeats at the Grand Tour rapid/blitz in Paris and Brussels this summer or how he was crushed 20.5-6.5 by Levon Aronian in the chess.com speed knockout.

So although Carlsen will surely make a serious winning attempt with his final White in Saturday’s game 11, there is also an argument for Plan B, namely to eschew all risk at the end as he did against Sergey Karjakin in 2016 and head for the tie-breaks.

When the match does finally end, the winner will receive the plaudits, the traditional laurel wreath from the new Fide president Arkady Dvorkovich, prize money of €600,000 or €550,000 (depending on whether it goes to tie-breaks) ,and a guaranteed minimum two-year reign until the next challenger arrives in 2020. But what about the loser?

For Caruana, it will not be so bad. Having got extremely close and proving himself Carlsen’s equal at match play, he has every incentive to aim for another title shot in 2020 when he will be only 28 years old. His 2832 rating is virtually equal to Carlsen’s 2835, he can realistically plan to capture the No 1 global rating soon. Carlsen has been top dog in the ratings for seven years and has said that he values No 1 almost as much as the official crown.

Caruana will also have plenty to look forward to in his home city of St Louis and for the US team, which will aim to capture the world team championship and regain the Olympiad gold medals from China in 2020. America’s billionaire benefactor Rex Sinquefield, who has made St Louis a global capital for international chess, is always looking for new ideas. Would Carlsen and Fide agree to a Carlsen v Caruana rematch in St Louis in 2019? Giving the champion the right to accept a challenge from the No 1 in the rankings is at least an arguable concept.

It will be much more traumatic if Carlsen loses his crown. While the US has other elite grandmasters and rising talents, Norway’s chess boom is based on Carlsen, whose laconic down to earth personality has made him a national hero.

When NRK, the government-owned broadcaster, made the bold decision in 2913 to televise live the whole of Carlsen’s first match against Vishy Anand, critics said that it would be like watching paint to dry. But for the final game in Chennai the TV audience was 355,000. In 2014 for the return series in Sochi, 572,000 watched the decisive game. In 2016, when Carlsen and Karjakin played their speed tiw-breaks in New York, 768,000, 56% of the national TY audience, saw the programme.

NRK makes it a spectator sport. The live show has audience participation, a meter to show thecomputer odds and a light approach, plus a resident grandmaster. In the last resort it works because Carlsen wins the matches at the end. But if he loses, and has no further chance for at least two years, the chess boom will probably falter, as it did in Britain and the US in the 1970s when Fischer refused to meet Anatoly Karpov.

Carlsen would have to cope with his own form crisis. Asked to name their chess hero, Caruana answered “Fischer” while Carlsen replied “myself, four or five years ago”. Some of his sharpness and accuracy has diminished and he has become like Mikhail Botvinnik after the 1040s, primus inter pares rather than supremely dominant. He might struggle to win the 2020 candidates ahead of the Azeri world No 3 Shak Mamedyarov and China’s’s No 4 Ding Liren. Much is at stake. Game 11 on Saturday, game 12 on Monday, and tie-breaks if needed on Wednesday are the dates for your diary.

The world women’s championship, a 64-player knock-out, went to a final tie-break on Friday, China’s Ju Wenjun, who kept her crown with a 5-3 score against Russia’s Katervna Lagno, is ranked No 2 behind Hou Yifan, who is working for a masters degree from a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford. Fide is changing the format of the women’s event, so that Ju will keep her title until 2020 and then meet the winner of an eight-player candidates.

Ju, needing to win the fourth classical game with Black, surprised her opponent with 5...e5!? which she followed up with f7-f6, rooks on the g file, and an attack on the white king. Black fluffed her first opportunity (19...c4! 20 Nxg6 Bxd6 21 dxc4 Be6 and the attack will break through) but received a second chance by 28 Kh1?? when 28 Qh5! is level Ju aeized on the mistake by rerouting her bishop to the long white diagonal by 28...Bc8! which led to a speedy mating attack.</s>What term do you want to search? Search with google</s>After nine consecutive draws, Fabiano Caruana and Magnus Carlsen have drawn yet again in the Chess World Championship in London. There are now just two games left for either player to find a win or the series will go to a best of four tiebreaker series.

World number one Carlsen came close to winning Game 9 on Wednesday but lost his advantage following a rushed decision to offer up a pawn on his 25th move. Grandmaster (GM) Hiraku Nakamura called the move “a little premature to me”, a sentiment which was echoed by Carlsen after the game concluded.

“I felt like I had a comfortable advantage and then I just blew it, I was poor,” said Carlsen, visibly disappointed by the way the game ended. That ninth draw set the record for the longest streak of games without a win in the 132-year history of the Chess World Championship.

Finally though, in Game 10, Carlsen went all in. After spending 15 minutes contemplating his 21st move he surprised everyone by sacrificing a pawn in order to remove a rook hindering his attacks. Once he made the move he jumped up from his chair and headed to the refreshment area.

The pressure ramped up on world number two Caruana. As the moves progressed the pair traded bishops and then queens before reaching time control on move 40. For Carlsen to win, he needed to do it with just his rooks and pawns.

Russian GM Peter Svidler said Caruana was in a difficult position. “My hands would be very shaky with white in this position. It’s very, very scary.” With the game in such a fine balance, one mistake could prove fatal.

An over-extension of the king by Carlsen potentially opened the door for Caruana to take something from the game but Carlsen managed to retreat just in time. The game then fizzled out to a draw a few moves later as neither side had a chance of winning.

There are still two games left in the series, organised by the World Chess Federation (FIDE), with a prize fund of one million euros on the line. If the score is level after these last two games then the series will go to the tiebreakers.

In these extra games each player will start with 25 minutes on the clock with an increment of 10 seconds after each move. Should the series reach this point, Carlsen will be the favourite to win given he is also the world number one Blitz Chess player.

Off the board, there was major controversy early on in the series as a two-minute video was uploaded to the Saint Louis Chess Club Youtube channel before being removed shortly after. The video showed details of Caruana’s preparation for the championship.

While the video was online several screenshots were taken and shared online. Chess fans were quick to analyse the photos, including one of a laptop screen showing openings potentially being research by Caruana. The names of three grandmasters were also contained in the video – Leinier Domínguez, Alejandro Ramírez and Ioan-Cristian Chirila – who are working as second’s to help the American prepare

The final games of the series are played on Saturday 24th and Monday 26th and are shown for free on the FIDE website. They are also streamed on Twitch.tv by Chess.com hosted by IM Daniel Rensch and GM Robert Hess with regular appearances by guests such as GM’s Hiraku Nakamura and Yifan Hou.</s>As it stands, there are only two more games remaining out of the scheduled 12 games of the World Chess Championship match that is underway. On Thursday evening, world champion, Magnus Carlsen and his challenger, Fabiano Caruana agreed to their tenth straight draw at The College in Holborn, central London, leaving the match in a 5-5 deadlock.

Going into the tenth game, Caruana was believed to have a slight edge in the match since he had one more white game in store than the world champion. In this first of his two remaining white games, Caruana opened once again with 1.e4 and Carlsen responded with the Sicilian Defence.

For the first eleven moves, the players repeated the moves from the eighth game of the match. Once again, the double edged sword called the Sicilian Sveshnikov was on the board. In the eighth game, Carlsen had struggled with the black pieces in this line and had even come agonizingly close to a loss. It seemed unlikely, therefore, that the Sveshnikov would repeat itself in the match.

Even though Carlsen’s opening choice entailed a little bit of a surprise, Caruana was well prepared in the line. In fact, he was the one to veer the game into unknown territory with an opening novelty on the 12th move. But once again, with the Sveshnikov, Carlsen was on the hunt for a wild game, and Caruana said he was expecting it, given the opening.

“The type of game I was expecting from this line – it was very, very double edged, both sides are taking risks. Black takes some very clear risks because he is going for an attack so he’s going all in. And of course, I am being attacked so I could potentially get mated,” Caruana said.

And as Caruana had foreseen, Carlsen absolutely went for broke in the game. On his 21st turn, Carlsen came up with an ingenious pawn sacrifice that won the heart of even Garry Kasparov, who is regarded to be the chess player of all time. Before Carlsen had actually played the move, the possibility was being discussed at the Today in Chess webcast by the Saint Louis Chess Club where Kasparov said: “If he does it he deserves to remain a world champion.”

And indeed, 21…b5 was on the board soon enough. The pawn sacrifice, if accepted, could have given Carlsen an extremely strong attack. But Caruana was on his toes. Quite sensibly, he declined the sacrifice and avoided the exchange of rooks, which would have torn two of his king’s defenders away from the battle lines.

Carlsen said after the game that he was happy with the outcome of the opening but had missed black’s defensive idea with 19.Ra3 and 21.Kh1. Talking about his inventive pawn sacrifice, the world champion said: "I thought for it for so long and I wasn’t sure about it. I thought I would just go for it and up the stakes even more – either you win the game, or you get mated."

However, Carlsen neither lost the game nor did Caruana get mated. Caruana’s choice of defence, 24.g3 had given him a permanent weakness on the g2 square but the world title challenger had it under control after the trade of the light squared bishops.

Another interesting moment came on the 35th move when black went 35…Qe2. At first glance, it seemed that the queen could have been trapped with 36.Qb3+ Kh8 and 37.c4 but a closer look revealed that black had the tactical resource 37…Rxb6 to save the day. Again, quite carefully, Caruana went for 36.Re1 and entered an equal double rook endgame where white had a queenside pawn majority against black’s central pawn phalanx. Caruana induced further liquidation with 48.c4, after which both sides had just one rook apiece alongside a trio of pawns on the kingside. A draw was agreed after six more moves.

With game ten drawn, players still remain deadlocked at 5-5 as the match goes into its fifth rest day on Friday. When the action resumes on Saturday, Carlsen will have the white pieces for the last time in the match. Given the way this antepenultimate game of the match has gone, it will not be a surprise if the world champ goes for some more adventurous play in Game 11 in order to seal the match in his name.
After ten consecutive draws, a record for the 132-year-old championship, Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana are tied 5 points each in the best-of-12-games match.