It was a good day for GOATs! Lionel Messi orchestrated the performance as Argentina cruised into the World Cup final, while on the chessboard Magnus Carlsen didn’t lose a game in four hours as he crushed Fabiano Caruana 22:4. “It certainly hasn’t been done against somebody as strong as Fabi“, noted Magnus, who at one point won 11 games in a row.

It's been a year of crushing quarterfinal victories in the Chess.com Speed Chess Championship. Nihal Sarin won the final five bullet games to defeat Ding Liren 17:9, and now plays Hikaru Nakamura, who eased past Levon Aronian 15.5:8.5. That was nothing, however, compared to the total dominance Magnus Carlsen showed as he beat Fabiano Caruana 22:4.  

Laurent Fressinet, Peter Leko and Nils Grandelius commentated on all the action.

An intense battle in the first game, where Fabi put up great resistance before Magnus won, didn’t suggest what was to follow, though the way Magnus took over in a time scramble in the 2nd did give a hint of how the match would pan out.

Magnus at times got down to under a second, and later commented to Danny Rensch and David Naroditsky on the official broadcast:

I’m happiest about the fact that I never lost on time. I was close a lot of times, but I felt like I was generally quite good at using the 1-second increment. I felt that very often when we got into scrambles he would make these quick, obvious moves that were often wrong, when he actually had a little bit of time to think, but I think that’s also a case of when things go wrong, that’s what happens.

The next three games were drawn, making it clear that Magnus wasn’t going to give away any easy points. He talked about his opening strategy:

I have to say that before the match I thought his only chance was to hit me in the openings, especially with the white pieces, so I didn’t really think too much about my white games, I just wanted to be solid as Black. I played fairly serious openings. This Marshall stuff is obviously very similar to what I played in the match against Ian last year, so I definitely took the match seriously in that sense. I wanted to make sure I didn’t lose in the openings, because I thought as long as I survive the openings then I’m a huge favourite.

What was the strategy with White?

I guess as White I was trying to play fairly simple positions, relatively technical, often symmetrical positions. I thought those would suit me well, because he’s often pretty good in complicated positions where he can use his calculating ability.

After the draws, Magnus again accelerated in time trouble to take a 3-point lead.

He won the next as well to almost wrap up the match as a contest, and it was the game that pleased him most.

Generally most of the games in this format are going to be messy, but there was one game that I was actually very happy with, which was […] the Petroff where I got knight against bishop as well as queen and rook, a very symmetrical position. I think I played that game very well. Normally I’m not happy with games, but that’s one that I was really satisfied with.

Magnus unbalanced the position by pushing his h-pawn to reach this position.

Here 25.Qe3 sacrificed the h5-pawn, but after 25…gxh5?! 26.Qd3 Kh8 27.Qf5! queens were exchanged, the white king advanced to regain the pawn, and remarkably quickly Caruana had nothing better than to resign a hopeless ending.

After a draw in the final game, Magnus was exactly where he wanted to be after the 5-minute section.

The change in time control is sometimes a chance for a player to change the course of a match, and Fabi did get a promising position in the first 3+1 game, but Magnus then took over to win a position with Rook + Knight against Queen. “Pure magic,” said his second, Laurent Fressinet.

Once again it was one-way traffic. Despite missing a win in the 2nd 3+1 game, Magnus won the next to take a 6-point lead.

Here 44.g5! made all the difference, just when a draw seemed on the cards. After 44…hxg5 45.Bxg5 you can’t play 45…fxg5 as that allows a famous endgame tactic.

46.f6! gxf6 47.h6 and the h-pawn queens. Fabi limited the damage with 45…Bd8! and got chances to hold, but Magnus still won in the end. He commented on the position before g5:

To be honest, at this point I was cruising a little bit, just trying to play safe, take any chances that I could find, and immediately when we got to this position after Kc6 I was thinking g5 looks tempting, let’s see if it works. I did have, I think, 40-50 seconds, so the calculation, making sure it doesn’t lose, was really straightforward, but yeah, it was a big moment. It’s very, very easy to play Kf3, Ke4 automatically here and then the chance is gone.

Magnus would go on to win the last four games of the 3+1 section, including a surprise checkmate, relying on his pinning the f5-pawn on the previous move.

7:1 in the 3-minute section meant any question of the overall result was a distant memory, with Magnus focussed on bigger goals.

Hikaru Nakamura once crushed Hou Yifan 27.5:2.5 without losing a single game, but Magnus was correct when he noted of going undefeated that, “it certainly hasn’t been done against somebody as strong as Fabi”. Magnus said it “definitely became a goal”, adding:

Towards the end of the blitz I thought it would be really cool not to lose any games, and then when the bullet started I felt I’m probably going to get a random loss here and there, but towards the end I was checking the clock, seeing how many games were left, and seeing if I could wrap it up. I think when you have these long matches, especially when they’re decided pretty early, you’ve got to set yourself goals to make them more interesting, and I understand that for Fabi this was agony, but for me this was motivation to try and keep my level up. It’s easy for both to let go of the rope, that you have seen in a lot of matches, that the level drops drastically, and the level did drop a little bit, but I still felt that I kept it up better than I usually do.

The 1-minute games did threaten to get out of control, but somehow Magnus always found a way, particularly in the intense 3rd game.

It was perhaps good that he was so focused on going unbeaten that he may have missed another milestone — in Game 6 of the bullet he won a 10th game in a row, what’s become known as “adoption” in online chess jargon. Magnus seemed to have missed a move in the middle of the game, but suddenly he was completely winning anyway.

Here 25…Bc5! left Fabi helpless against the threat of Be3+. The game ended 26.Rd2 Be3 27.Rd1 Rd5 28.Be1 Ra5! and suddenly you can’t stop Ra1 checkmate next move.

Magnus won the next game as well before his winning streak ended on 11 games, but of course it ended with a draw. One more win, and Magnus had wrapped up a 22:4 victory over arguably his greatest rival, at least in classical chess.

Magnus will now play the winner of the final quarterfinal, Wesley So vs. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.

When Magnus last played the Speed Chess Championship, in 2020, he lost to MVL 13:11 in the semi-finals. Magnus would welcome a chance for a rematch, though, echoing a phrase he’s used about Jan-Krzysztof Duda, he wouldn’t consider a win revenge.

Beating Maxime wouldn’t be revenge, but it would be a step towards revenge, at the very least. I’m definitely hoping to play him, but honestly I think the match is a toss-up. I think Wesley has played poorly recently in speed chess, but he showed during the Global Chess Championship what he can do, so he definitely has the ability to win, even by a big margin, if he’s at his very best.

That match overlaps with France playing Morocco in the World Cup semi-finals, starting at 19:00 CET on Wednesday December 14th. You can follow all the action here on chess24.

See also:

• Official website
• chess24 games: Caruana vs. Erigaisi, Ding vs. Grischuk, Nepo vs. MVL, Aronian vs. Andreikin, Carlsen vs. Gukesh, Nihal vs. Giri, So vs. Abdusattorov, Nakamura vs. Paravyan, Ding vs. Nihal, Nakamura vs. Aronian, Carlsen vs. Caruana, So vs. MVL