Tomorrow the world chess championship will be decided in London by a succession of games played at increasingly fast time limits It's an unsatisfactory to decide the game's ultimate honour - rather like deciding a drawn Ashes series with a Twenty20 game.And there have been several problems with the match between the reigning champion, Norway's Magnus Carlsen, and his challenger, Fabiano Caruana from the United States.Carlsen has seemed out of sorts, particularly after failing to convert a favourable position in the first game. In the final game he offered the draw that took the game into a fast play off rather than press for victory in another good position.All 12 games in the match were drawn, which was disappointing for the chess enthusiasts watching around the world. Games between top players often do end in draws, but this was an unprecedented streak of them.A 12-game match seems too short to me, making players afraid of losing. Fischer and Spassky was a 24-game match and that length makes it possible for a player to take a risk, lose and still come back to win the match.And there were complaints about the expense of tickets and the facilities offered to spectators who went to watch live.Carlsen is the favourite to win tomorrow as he is a significantly stronger at fast speeds than is Caruana. But note the words of a former champion.Whoever wins tomorrow, I suspect the match will have dented Carlsen's aura of effortless invincibility.And the number of draws has been in part a reflection of how hard it now is to surprise your opponent in the opening when everyone has access to powerful computers.A good new move used to be played and debated round the world for months or years. These days everyone (apart from the player facing it) knows the best reply as soon has it is played.</s>The World Chess Championship goes into overtime Wednesday, as Norway's Magnus Carlsen and the United States' Fabiano Caruana compete for the title. After 12 games and 12 draws, the two grandmasters meet in London for a series of tie-breaking games. If Caruana wins, he would be the first American champion since Bobby Fischer in 1972. Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson talks with Hungarian chess grandmaster and official match commentator Judit Polgár (@GMJuditPolgar) about the matchup.</s>For hours, the play in Monday’s Game 12 of the World Chess Championship was filthy. Then it was weird. Things did not look drawish! But because of a remarkable decision by the world’s top grandmaster, they ended in a draw anyway.

Over more than two weeks, more than 600 moves, 48 hours of play, one scandalous video and one black eye, the world’s top two grandmasters have now fought to a dozen straight draws. The World Chess Championship match between Norway’s Magnus Carlsen and the U.S.’s Fabiano Caruana remains deadlocked at the end of regulation, and the title will be now be decided by speedy tie-breaking games including, perhaps, a sudden-death format known as Armageddon.

But before the tiebreakers came a wild, oscillating Game 12. Carlsen, with the black pieces, and Caruana, with the white, began with the Sveshnikov Sicilian, just as they had in Game 8 and Game 10. Carlsen was the first to deviate from the earlier contests, perhaps a stratagem to take Caruana out of his seemingly excellent preparation for the championship, and to angle for a decisive result at last. By the 12th move, the two were in uncharted territory, looking at a board that that no two people had created before at this level of chess.

“This is going to get really dirty, really soon,” said Levon Aronian, the world No. 11, on a Chess.com broadcast. Sharp, gnarly and double-edged attacks appeared to be arriving soon, and the game was surely bound to be the first decisive result of the match. Surely!

Caruana thought for about 25 minutes before making his 17th move. It’s hard to blame him, as the position on the board was very complicated. Worse for Caruana, it soon became complicated in a way that favored the Norwegian. “It looks like black is having all the fun in the position,” the grandmaster Robert Hess said after Caruana’s 21st move. All of black’s cavalry was mounted and armored and ready to charge. Black had more space in which to prepare its plans, and its bishops would likely soon eye an attack on the kingside.

Undeterred, with his 21st and 22nd moves — rook to h2 and castling on the queenside, readying a heavy battery — Caruana signaled his willingness to fight.

It was a willingness that led to real trouble. After Caruana’s 25th move, he was down more than 30 minutes on the clock and the equivalent of nearly two pawns, according to a supercomputer analyzing the game. The middlegame became a wild rumpus, and a scary one for fans of the American, one that neither human grandmasters nor chess superengines could make all that much sense of. Swings in advantage were wild, and time pressure was mounting. After Carlsen’s 31st move, Caruana had less than nine minutes remaining and faced this position.

An attack was coming Caruana’s way, his time was dangerously low, and he was about to make the eight most important moves of his life under various flavors of high pressure. But Carlsen reached out his hand before Caruana could move and offered a draw — a pacifistic bolt from the blue. Caruana happily shook it.

I’m not a grandmaster — far from it — but the position above looks nothing like a draw to me. There are, to put it professionally, soooooo many pieces left, including a ton of firepower, plus a pawn rolling down the left flank for black and various pieces that are under attack. And yet, a draw. Another draw.

“I wasn’t in a mood to find the punch,” Carlsen said by way of explanation after the game.

“I should be really happy with a draw,” Caruana said. “My position had no chances to win.”

Caruana said he was surprised by the draw offer. So was everyone else.

Let’s leave a deeper discussion of whether Carlsen’s shocking gesture is good for chess for later (it’s absolutely not) and take a look at how we got here.

Our championship computer analysis chart is now completed, but its contents weren’t enough to determine a winner. According to the match rules, here’s what the grandmasters will do on Wednesday:
• They’ll play a mini-match of four rapid games, in which each player gets 25 minutes plus 10 bonus seconds after each move. Points will be awarded as they were during regulation: 1 point for a win, half a point each for a draw.
• If the score is still tied after those four games, they’ll play a mini-match of two blitz games, in which each player gets five minutes plus three bonus seconds after each move. If that’s tied, they’ll play another and another and so on, for up to five mini-matches, or 10 total blitz games.
• If all of those two-game blitz matches are tied, they’ll play a single game of Armageddon. In this format, white gets five minutes, black gets four minutes, and a draw counts as a win for black. Lots are drawn (no pun intended) to determine who gets which color.

For the risk averse grandmaster, there was an incentive to head to tiebreakers: The 1 million pound prize fund is divided 60-40 to the winner, unless the match is decided in tiebreakers, in which case, it’s 55-45.

But who will win 55 percent of the money? Probably Carlsen, and the faster the tiebreakers get, the bigger Carlsen’s advantage.

To see why, let’s do a little math to calculate each player’s win probability in each potential round of tiebreakers. First, we need some measure of the players’ strengths in the speedier formats — I’ll use FIDE’s Elo ratings. Carlsen’s rapid rating is 2880, and his blitz rating is 2939; Caruana’s rapid rating is 2789, and his blitz rating is 2767. We also need a measure of how likely draws are in these faster formats. I’ll use historical data. In last year’s World Rapid Championship, for example, about 30 percent of the games were draws. In last year’s World Blitz Championship (which Carlsen won), about 20 percent of the games were draws.

Combining those facts and running a bunch of simulations give the following probabilistic picture of the world championship tiebreakers. Carlsen is a roughly 80 percent favorite — again, based only on the quantitative factors mentioned above. These simulations do not care about Caruana’s strong form in the 12 lengthy games that have been played so far or his confident utterances during recent post-game press conferences. (In real life, the two have played 23 speedier games against each other, according to Chessgames.com — Carlsen won 13, Caruana won six and four were draws.)

While I hate to disappoint, these somewhat crude calculations suggest only a 0.02 percent — or 1-in-5,000 — chance of Armageddon at the World Chess Championship.

Then again, maybe the conventional wisdom is all wrong. For what it’s worth, the longtime world champion Garry Kasparov reassessed his own prediction of the tiebreakers following Monday’s draw.

The tie-breaking games begin Wednesday at 10 a.m. Eastern, and a world champion will be crowned. I’ll be covering them here and on Twitter.</s>What term do you want to search? Search with google</s>The world championship tilt between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana will be decided in a quickfire tie-breaker after Monday’s Game 12 ended in a 31-move draw. The result shocked onlookers in light of the champion’s advantages in position and time, and left the best-of-12-games match in a historic 6-6 deadlock.

The latest bloodless result, the 12th draw between the world’s top two players in as many contests, ensured the €1m showdown in London will go down as the first title match in which no decisive results were managed in the official 132-year history of world championship play.

“I wasn’t necessarily going for the maximum,” said Carlsen, who essentially admitted he was content to settle it in the tie-breaker after move 20. “I just wanted a position that was completely safe, [BUT]where I could put some pressure. If a draw hadn’t been a satisfactory result, obviously I would have approached it differently.”

The 27-year-old champion from Norway will play as white in Wednesday’s first tie-break stage after a drawing of lots following Monday’s game: a best-of-four rapid match with 25 minutes for each player with an increment of 10 seconds after each move. If that’s not enough to break the deadlock, they will play up to five mini-matches of two blitz games (five minutes for each player with a three-second increment). If all five mini-matches are drawn, it will come down to one sudden-death ‘Armegeddon’ match where white receives five minutes and black receives four minutes and both will receive a three-second increment after the 60th move. If that game is drawn, black will be declared the winner.

Carlsen, who in addition to his number one ranking is the world’s top rated rapid player and top rated blitz player (compared to Caruana’s respective ratings of No 8 and No 16), is widely regarded as a warm favorite in the format, not least due to a 13-year unbeaten record in tie-breakers. But no less than Garry Kasparov said Monday that Carlsen’s hasty draw offer betrayed a lapse of nerve in the 27-year-old reigning champion.

“In light of this shocking draw offer from Magnus in a superior position with more time, I reconsider my evaluation of him being the favorite in rapids,” the longtime world number one wrote on Twitter. “Tiebreaks require tremendous nerves and he seems to be losing his.”

Caruana, as white, played into the Sveshnikov variation in Monday’s classical finale, as he did in the eighth and 10th games. Carlsen was first to deviate from those lines with 8. ... Ne7 and Caruana quickly fell behind on time after the champion played a novelty with 12. ... h5.

The 26-year-old American challenger was offered a chance for a draw by repetition shortly after (13. Qa4 Bd7 14. Qb4 Bf5) but bravely turned it down with 15. Be3. Yet Caruana’s temporal issues compounded over the next few moves (15. ... a6 16. Nc3 Qc7 17. g3 Be7 18. f3 Nf8 19. Ne4 Nd7 20. Bd3) and he found himself nearly 50 minutes behind on the clock.

After Carlsen castled following a 12-minute think (20. ... O-O), Caruana delivered a surprise move (21. Rh2!?) that cost him in the opinion of the evaluation engines, but earned praise from the Russian grandmaster Alexander Grischuk from the commentary booth: “The deepest move in the match so far,” he said.

Even after the champion expended another 10 minutes before playing 21. ... Rac8, Carlsen was ahead in development with more than a half-hour advantage in time. He pressed the initiative with 22. ... Bg6 23. Rc2 f5 and Caruana’s dubious 25. f4 sent the computers haywire. The challenger’s position appeared increasingly difficult to hold after 26. ... e4 27. Be2 Be8 28. Kb1 Bf6 29. Re1 a4 30. Qb4 g6.

Which made Carlsen’s decision to offer a draw after 31. Rd1 Ra8 nothing short of mystifying. A relieved Caruana gladly accepted after a game that had lasted two hours and 57 minutes, sending the match to Wednesday’s tie-breaker.

“I was a bit surprised by the draw offer,” Caruana said. “I can never be better [THEN MOVE 31]. And I don’t really have any active ideas. If anything, black is better. At least I thought I was over the worst of it. I thought it was much more dangerous a few moves ago.”

He added: “I’m mainly relieved because I thought it was quite close today. I was very worried during the game. When you feel like you’re sort of on the brink of defeat, or at least you have a very dangerous position, then of course it’s quite good.”</s>The world championship tilt between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana will be decided in a quickfire tie-breaker after Monday’s Game 12 ended in a draw. The result shocked onlookers in light of the champion’s advantages in position and time, and left the best-of-12-games match in a historic 6-6 deadlock.

The latest bloodless result, the 12th draw between the world’s top two players in as many contests, ensured the €1m ($1.14m) showdown in London will go down as the first title match in which no decisive results were managed in the official 132-year history of world championship play.

“I wasn’t necessarily going for the maximum,” said the 27-year-old Carlsen, who essentially admitted he was content with a draw after move 20. “I just wanted a position that was completely safe, [but] where I could put some pressure. If a draw hadn’t been a satisfactory result, obviously I would have approached it differently.”

Caruana, as white, played into the Sveshnikov variation, as he did in the eighth and 10th games. Carlsen was first to deviate from those lines with 8. ... Ne7 and Caruana quickly fell behind on time after the champion played a novelty with 12. ... h5.

The American challenger was offered a chance for a draw by repetition shortly after (13. Qa4 Bd7 14. Qb4 Bf5) but bravely turned it down with 15. Be3. Yet Caruana’s temporal issues compounded over the next few moves (15. ... a6 16. Nc3 Qc7 17. g3 Be7 18. f3 Nf8 19. Ne4 Nd7 20. Bd3) and he found himself nearly 50 minutes behind on the clock.

After Carlsen castled following a 12-minute think (20. ... O-O), Caruana delivered a surprise move (21. Rh2!?) that cost him in the opinion of the evaluation engines, but earned praise from the Russian grandmaster Alexander Grischuk, who was in the commentary booth: “The deepest move in the match so far,” he said.

Even after the champion expended another 10 minutes before playing 21. ... Rac8, Carlsen was ahead in development with more than a half-hour advantage in time. He pressed the initiative with 22. ... Bg6 23. Rc2 f5 and Caruana’s dubious 25. f4 sent the computers haywire. The challenger’s position appeared increasingly difficult to hold after 26. ... e4 27. Be2 Be8 28. Kb1 Bf6 29. Re1 a4 30. Qb4 g6.

Which made Carlsen’s decision to offer a draw after 31. Rd1 Ra8 nothing short of mystifying. A relieved Caruana gladly accepted after a game that had lasted two hours and 57 minutes, sending the match to Wednesday’s tie-breaker.

“I was a bit surprised by the draw offer,” the 26-year-old Caruana said. “I can never be better [than move 31]. And I don’t really have any active ideas. If anything, black is better. At least I thought I was over the worst of it. I thought it was much more dangerous a few moves ago.”</s>Three-time defending champion Magnus Carlsen had been neck and neck with American Fabiano Caruana ahead of their latest match, which once again resulted in a tie.

Game 12 of 12 ended in a draw after 31 moves, with Carlsen — who had been enjoying a clear time advantage — offering a draw that Caruana accepted.

Many observers were surprised that Carlsen offered a draw while appearing to have the upper hand, including former chess champion Gary Kasparov, who felt the Norwegian might be losing his nerve.

The pair also eked out ties in their first 11 world championship games, meaning they stand level in the championship stakes on six points each (with half a point awarded to each player for each draw).

The 27-year-old Carlsen — nicknamed the "Thor of Chess" — has been seeking to cement his reputation as one of history's greatest players of the game. Caruana, aged 26, is the first American to compete for the title since chess legend Bobby Fischer in 1972.

In the playoff on Wednesday, the pair will face each other in the best of four rapid games. If still tied, they would compete in two "blitz games" in which each player would have only five minutes. Should the players still be level, the championship would go down to a single "Armageddon" match, the format of which guarantees a winner.

Carlsen could be favorite in the tie-break, considering that he also holds titles in speed and blitz chess, while Caruana's recent record in speed chess has been poor.

In addition to the prestige of winning the title, the pair are also battling over a €1 million (£880,000) cash prize.

Caruana, an Italian-American from Miami, earned his shot to play Carlsen by winning the Candidates Tournament earlier this year in Berlin.</s>Hello and welcome to London for today’s 12th game of the world chess championship between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana. Play resumes today at the College in Holborn after with the best-of-12-games match deadlocked at 5½-all following 11 draws in as many contests. Sixteen days and no blood drawn: the longest streak of games to open a match without a decisive result in the recognized 132-year history of world championship play. But the tension will never be higher than today, where a decisive result would lift the winner over the 6½-point threshold and determine an outright winner in the €1m ($1.14m) showdown.

If Carlsen can pull off a win with the black pieces, the 27-year-old from Norway will seal his third defense of the title he captured from Viswanathan Anand in 2013.

If Caruana can win as white, the 26-year-old challenger will not only become the second American-born player to capture the world championship after Bobby Fischer in 1972, he will inherit the No 1 ranking that Carlsen has held uninterrupted since July 2011.

If they draw for a 12th time, it will all come down to Wednesday’s tie-breaker, which consists of a series of games under shorter time controls.

A brief recap on how we got here: Game 1 was a grueling seven-hour, 115-move staredown, where Carlsen nearly become the first defending champion to win the opening game of a world championship as black in 37 years. The next four contests – Game 2, Game 3, Game 4 and Game 5 – were mostly safer, straightforward affairs that allowed Caruana to get his teeth in the match. The tension ramped up in Game 6 when Carlsen was outplayed by Caruana in the middlegame and pushed to the limit before saving a draw with incredibly precise defending. They played to another draw in Game 7, a result that left the champion lamenting his gun-shy play as white. In Game 8, Carlsen found himself down nearly an hour on the clock facing a dangerous position as black, until one false step by the American allowed him to hold. It was Caruana’s turn to suffer in Wednesday’s Game 9 until he was bailed out by a Carlsen inaccuracy. Then came Thursday’s Game 10, where Caruana found himself on the brink once more until Carlsen overextended himself and was made to grovel for a peaceful result. Saturday’s Game 11 fizzled out practically before liftoff, ending in a simple two-and-a-quarter-hour draw.

Eleven games. Eleven draws. Will the staredown finally end today? We’ll soon find out when Caruana makes the first move at the top of the hour.</s>
• The 2018 World Chess Championship will go to tiebreakers after a shocking draw in Game 12 on Monday.
• There had been an unprecedented 11 draws before Monday’s result.
• The reigning world champion, Magnus Carlsen, had an edge in Game 12 but didn’t capitalize.

UPDATE: Game 12 ended, controversially, in a draw after 31 moves, after Magnus Carlsen held a slight edge with the black pieces. The chess world was shocked by the result. The match will now go to tiebreakers on Wednesday to decide the championship.

After an unprecedented 11 draws, the 2018 World Chess Championship has come down to a final classical game on Monday in London between the defending champ, Magnus Carlsen of Norway, and his challenger, Fabiano Caruana of the United States.

The No. 1 and No. 2 players in the world are separated by just a year in age and a few ranking points: Carlsen, 27, is at 2,835, and Caruana, 26, is at 2,832. So the march of equal results shouldn’t entirely be a surprise, though it’s never happened before. In 2013 and 2014, Carlsen defeated the former world champion Vishy Anand of India with decisive wins over the board in classical time controls, without going to rapid or blitz tiebreakers.

That wasn’t the case in 2016, when Russia’s Sergey Karjakin challenged Carlsen and won a single game. Carlsen also won a game, then the remainder were draws, but Carlsen defended his title in the “Armageddon” rounds that followed.

On Monday, Caruana has the white pieces and a slight statistical edge, but the big question is whether he’ll press for a win, overextend himself, and hand the title to Carlsen, or angle for a draw and take his chances in the tiebreakers. The latter is risky, as Carlsen is the world’s best rapid and blitz player.

Read more: American challenger Fabiano Caruana missed his best chance to win a game against Magnus Carlsen at World Chess Championship

Caruana’s preparation for the match has generally been better than Carlsen’s, but while both players have enjoyed opportunities to win, neither has converted. Caruana, not an aggressive player, has sought to negate whatever small advantages Carlsen snared – a major difference from Anand’s brand of power chess, where he countered Carlsen’s talents by launching redoubtable assaults from his side of the board.

Caruana’s preparation vs. Carlsen’s uncanny ability to find the right responses, even when he’s in trouble

In the competitive championship games, we’ve seen Carlsen repeatedly caught in Caruana’s superior opening preparation but able to find the best moves to equalize. Caruana, meanwhile, has missed some tactical shots – or, if you accept that he possesses computerlike calculating skills, followed such moves down their lines of play and decided they were too risky.

The 11-all score line has set off the usual bout of complaints that there are too many draws in super-grandmaster chess. The Carlsen-Caruana draws have been fascinating studies in peaceful outcomes, and there have even been a few novelties uncorked, as well as many Sicilian Defences with the black pieces. (The Sicilian is regarded as one of black’s best chances to play for a win.)

But the chess has been rather studious, and it’s shown that at the top level, the use of analysis engines means it’s difficult to rattle the best competitors.

For many fans, a decisive result on Monday would be thrilling and make up for the march of draws; America might also have its first world champion since Bobby Fischer in 1972.

Coming off a rest day, neither player should be prone to a blunder brought on by stress, so one of these guys will have to go for it. The prospect of a sharper Sicilian looms, as that was the opening employed in Game 12, which showed an advantage for white after 12 moves, the result of an early punch thrown on the kingside by Carlsen.

Sharp Sicilians are notorious for getting out of hand for black – and Carlsen, having trounced Karjakin in the tiebreakers two years ago and knowing Caruana is the lesser “fast” player, could aim for a draw, though the initial moves of Game 12 suggest he has a win on his mind.</s>In a baffling end to a less-than-stellar match, world champion Magnus Carlsen offered a draw in a clearly superior position to American challenger Fabiano Caruana Monday, marking the 12th and final consecutive draw in their title match and setting up a rapid chess playoff for the crown Wednesday.

It was the first world chess title match ever without a single decisive result, as the world’s two top-ranked players continually probed but never managed to crack their opponent through a dozen games in London. Carlsen’s decision to offer the draw — quickly accepted by White — was even more difficult to understand since Caruana, facing a growing attack on his castled king, had barely six minutes left on his clock to make his next eight moves.

Despite outplaying his opponent from the Black side of a Sicilian Sveshnikov Defense, Carlsen missed a number of opportunities to sharpen the play, with many grandmasters and computer programs saying Black could have obtained a strong initiative with the aggressive 25…exf4 26. Bxf4 b5!, threatening to open up multiple attacking lines to the White king.

The Norwegian champ chose a slower approach, maintaining a clear clamp on the position and keeping Caruana, seeking to be the first American-born world champion since Bobby Fischer, on the defensive. But despite the champ’s penchant for making his opponents suffer for long stretches in unpleasant positions, it was Carlsen who unexpectedly offered to split the point on Move 31.

The match will be decided Wednesday with a four-game rapid playoff, in which each player has just 25 minutes to play his entire game. If they are still tied, the match will come down to a series of games at an even faster, “blitz” time controls.

The unprecedented run of draws has sparked serious talk that the match format needs an overhaul. One popular idea, though it could definitely draw out the proceedings, is to count only wins and say the winner is the first player to achieve a set number of victories — the format Fischer wanted in his forfeited 1975 title match.
After twelve consecutive draws, Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana will enter a tie-breaker on Wednesday, for the first match in WCC history to have no decisive games before the tie-breaker.