Caruana’s preparation vs Carlsen’s talent

Jupinderjit Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 20

The World Chess Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana in London may go down in history as a battle between preparation and sheer talent. The challenger, Caruana, is clearly better-prepared of the two. He has put Carlsen in a spot in almost all the games. Yet, Carlsen has escaped certain defeat on several occasions. Caruana, splendidly prepared ‘off-board’, has failed to deliver the decisive punch. Carlsen has been superior ‘on-board’ when games have entered the unknown, unprepared territories.

GM Hikaru Nakumara described Carlsen’s regular escapes as ‘annoying’. Nakamura, recalling his own games with Carlsen, said it’s annoying that the champ is often stuck in bad positions but wriggles out. “This is his talent. That is why he is the world champion.”

“But Caruana doesn’t have the natural intuition, the natural feel,” Nakamura added. Carlsen has been admitting in almost all his press conferences that he was “lost”.

In the eighth game yesterday, playing with white, Caruana got into a winning position but then faltered. His 24th move gave away his advantage — he played his pawn to h3, instead of c5, which would have given him a +2.45 advantage by all chess engines. Caruana defended this move, suggesting he was worried at the possible counter-play of the pawn advancement by Carlsen on advancing his pawns towards Caruana’s king. Carlsen admitted his rival seemed to have all the chances. Nakamura fears Caruana may well lose the match after drawing the game from a winning position.

Dubious record

With eight consecutive draws, the two have matched the record set by Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand in their title match in New York in 1995. Carlsen will have white pieces in the ninth game, which will be played on Wednesday.