The Norwegian beat Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia, securing the one point he needed to cross the seven point threshold to win the global tournament held at Dubai’s Expo 2020 in the United Arab Emirates.
After five drawn games, Carlsen pulled off a 136-move victory in the sixth. Thereafter, it was clear that Nepo was not the same. He committed one pawn-move blunder three times in the next five games and the result was a premature end to the match.
After that surprise blunder by Nepomniachtchi, Carlsen clinched his fifth world championship title. Up until that point, the match was tense with games ending in draw after draw.
Congratulations to @MagnusCarlsen on winning his 5th World Championship match and further cementing his legacy as arguably the greatest player in chess history! pic.twitter.com/amv8e55tCm
— Chess.com (@chesscom) December 10, 2021
“Then everything kind of clicked. I think after that it all went my way,” Carlsen told reporters from the world’s fair after his win.
“You don’t expect necessarily to run away with it in a World Championship.”
Carlsen also won 60 per cent of the 2 million-euro prize offered by the championship.
Nepomniachtchi said he was struggling to understand exactly what went wrong and at the moment had “no idea.
“The things that happened to me here never happened to me basically at any events … in my career I lost quite some stupid games,” Nepomniachtchi said grimly.
“I should find out why it happened.
Congratulations to World Champion GM Magnus Carlsen! ????????
Magnus Carlsen has just won against Ian Nepomniachtchi to take the match score to 7.5 – 3.5. Although Game 11 just ended, the format is best of 14 – so the Norwegian takes home his 5th @FIDE_chess World Championship title pic.twitter.com/4QVISaHOH1
— Lichess.org (@lichess) December 10, 2021
This is the fourth time that Carlsen is defending the world title he first won from Viswanathan Anand in 2013. He overcame the challenges of Anand (2014), Sergey Karjakin (2016) and Fabiano Caruana (2018) before destroying Nepo.
“I’m relieved, of course. It’s hard to feel that great joy when the situation was so comfortable to begin with, but I’m happy with a very good performance overall,” the 31-year-old added.
The final moment of game 11 as @MagnusCarlsen secured the 2021 world championship with a score of 7.5-3.5 against Ian Nepomniachtchi. #CarlsenNepo pic.twitter.com/FjHR1QGsNz
— Chess.com (@chesscom) December 10, 2021
“I didn’t expect it to go quite like this,” Carlsen dwelled further.
“I think it was just a very good professional performance overall. No regrets at all, just very satisfied.
“I guess it’s the most similar to my first match with Anand (in 2013), which was quite even and nervous at the start, When I got my first win, it was kind of the same story: it was relatively clean from there on out.”
(With inputs from Agencies)
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