And new world title, the 17th, for Magnus Carlsen, 33 years old, who never tires of winning despite the fact that his professional career began at a very early age and at the age of 13 he defeated Gary Kasparov. He achieved in the World Blitz Championship (3 minutes plus 2 additional seconds per movement) in Samarkand (Uzbekistan), after win the rapids on Thursday (15+10)had the added merit of occurring after starting the second day by losing against his friend and analyst Maxime Vachier Lagrave, after making a serious mistake by playing mechanically in the opening, and then chain a streak of six consecutive wins on which he founded his victory.
Another title, with 16 points out of 21 possible, for a legendary track record and with which he confirms that his refusal to defend the absolute world title was not due to lack of confidence in his strength but rather because he lacked the necessary motivation to dedicate many months of preparation to such a task.
The half-point penalty suffered by the Russians Danill Dubov -silver medalist- and Ian Nepomniachtchi for blatantly agreeing to a draw in the eleventh round -they moved the horses several times until they agreed on a tie in the initial position of the pieces- and that somewhat hindered the first’s options, it did not tarnish the ssuperiority shown by Carlsen in a type of game in which intuition and natural talent is sometimes more important than calculation. Without that sanction, Carlsen and Dubov should have played additional tiebreaker games in which the Norwegian, however, would have started as a favorite.
In the female category, Russian Valentina Gunina almost indisputably won the gold medal (14 out of 17 points). 24th seed, out of 118 participants, only the former absolute world champion, the Swiss of Russian origin Alexandra Kosteniuk, whom she beat in the sixth round, was able to maintain the pace in the second half of the tournament and take silver with half a point less.
