The most recent highlight of Magnus Carlsen’s illustrious career took place in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where he triumphed in both the World Rapid and World Blitz Chess Championships.
No other player has ever been able to win both the Rapid and Blitz titles in the same year. The Norwegian player, who is 32 years old, is now the holder of all three world chess championship titles—in classical, rapid, and blitz—for the third time in his career.
Carlsen joked about needing extra hands in the near future on Twitter, where he also posted a video of himself counting his now 15 world titles on his fingers.
It is a fitting way to close off Carlsen’s incredible decade-long reign as the classical world champion, especially considering that he has already stated that he will not defend his title in the coming year.
He stated in a press release that “it feels amazing” after winning two world championships in the span of three days. “It’s unbelievable.”
“This is a tremendously challenging competition.” It got off to a fantastic start the day before, but I didn’t feel like I had a lot of energy. Yesterday, I was focusing on staying alive until day two and determining whether or not I had a shot. “I woke up feeling a little bit better than I did the day before, and I worked hard to win as many games as I possibly could.”
The championships for rapid and blitz chess are played under far more time pressure than classical chess. The difference between Rapid and Blitz is that Rapid gives each player 15 minutes plus 10 seconds additional time per move, starting from move 1, while Blitz only gives each player three minutes per game and two seconds additional time per move.
On Wednesday, Carlsen won his fourth title in the Rapid competition, finishing half a point ahead of Vincent Keymer of Germany.
After that, he made a spectacular entrance to Round 1 of the World Blitz Championship by racing into the playing hall and arriving at his board two minutes and thirty seconds late while still clad in a tracksuit.
Even though there were only thirty seconds left on the clock, he was able to win the match.
“Because the Blitz championship can be won in competitions that have a greater number of rounds, it carries a significant amount of weight and is highly important.” As far as the classical championship [goes], I won it, but it wasn’t something I wanted to hang onto because it wasn’t valuable enough.
Hikaru Nakamura of the United States had been in the lead after Day 1 of the competition, but he ended up finishing in second place overall due to the pressure from Carlsen.
Carlsen stated the following in a post-match press release: “Although he is accustomed to winning tournaments, he has never won this one.” When he started to seem a little unsteady, that’s when I realized I had a chance.
Carlsen, on the other hand, was put under a great deal of stress after suffering two defeats at crucial periods, both at the hands of Russian players Ian Nepomniachtchi and Alexey Sarana.
However, he was able to keep his composure and finally clinch the championship by one point over Nakamura, with Armenia’s Haik M. Martirosyan coming in third place.