Norway Chess: Karjakin beats the World Champion and his challenger in two days
Sergey Karjakin, the 2016 challenger, had beaten the World Champion, Magnus Carlsen, in a classical game in Round 5 of the Norway Chess Tournament. In the next round, he defeated the 2021 challenger, Ian Nepomniachtchi, in the Armageddon game.
Carlsen chose to play safe with black, and went for the Sicilian Sveshnikov, an opening that he used in his 2018 match against Fabiano Caruana. After 17 moves of theory, Karjakin decided to go all in, spicing up the position with tactics, which worked beautifully for the Russian GM, and led him to a big win.
That was Carlsen’s second classical loss against Karjakin since G8 in the 2016 World Championship Match, and the World Champion was clearly very upset and skipped the visit to the TV 2 studio; instead went straight to his room.
Round 6 was equally impressive for Karjakin who managed to win the 2021 Challenger of the World Champion Title, Ian Nepomniachtchi, in the Armageddon game of the Norway Chess Tournament.
The two Russians have faced each other earlier in the Tournament, with Nepomniachtchi dominating the classical game against the Berlin defence. However, the “revenge” didn’t take long to strike, with Karjakin winning the Armageddon game of Round 6 brilliantly.
Twitter couldn’t let this series of events go unnoticed, and we are all waiting to see what the future holds for the 2016 challenger, who is definitely in good form.
