Carlsen vs Caruana: Black magic, White eclipsed

Jupinderjit Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 11

Black is the flavour of the season for the top gladiators of world chess, Magnus Carlsen of Norway and Fabiano Caruana of the US, after the first two games of the 12-game World Chess Championship.

Conventional wisdom has it that a player with the white pieces holds an advantage because he makes the first move. The job of the player with the black pieces is to look to first equalise and then try to gain an advantage. But in the first two games of the World Championship in London, Black was able to corner White in the opening moves only.

Clearly, the players were better prepared with the dark pieces. Carlsen dominated with black in the marathon 115-move first game. This is now the third-longest World Championship game, behind a 124-move game between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi in 1978, and a 122-move game played by Viswanathan Anand and Carlsen in Sochi in 2014.

Opting for black

For the opening game in London, Carlsen, the reigning champion, was offered the choice of colour to start the first game, and he opted for black, much to the surprise of commentators and analysts.

In second game, Black dominated again, but this time it was Caruana holding the black pieces. He left Carlsen breathless before they agreed to a 49-move draw. 

After two games, top players and analysts are not giving an edge to the champion or the challenger. Analysts agree that the players, like gladiators, have tried to find chinks in each other’s armour, inflicting a cut or a mild stab here and there, but not being able to make the other bleed and go for the kill.

Playing safe

Though both had chances to play sharper lines, they avoided them, suggesting that it was too early to go for a bloodbath. With a rating difference of just three points (Carlsen’s 2835 to Caruana’s 2832) but a strong record in favour of Carlsen (10 games to 5), the players chose to start with known lines and openings from previous games. The first novelty move came as early as the 7th move, by Carlsen, in Sicilian Defence in the first game.

Caruana responded in the second game with the surprising 10th move in the Queens Gambit Declined. He moved his rook to D8 instead of the most common E8, which was introduced by world champion Karpov against Korchnoi in 1978. Karpov’s lead has been followed ever since, for 40 years, till Caruana introduced the new variation yesterday. 

Surprise, surprise!

Caruana, thus, took the reigning champion by surprise, and Carlsen spent nearly 16 minutes to choose his response. Experts dug up database to assert that though weaker players have chosen this move in the past, it has never been played at a higher level. They were divided on the outcome of the move but had to agree that Caruana had something up his sleeve as Carlsen avoided a sharp response, preferring to play safe.

Both games ended in a Rook-Pawn ending, with the player with the black pieces a pawn up, being the aggressor. The third game would be played tomorrow at 8:30pm IST. Carlsen will have the black pieces — it remains to be seen if Black will dominate again.