The psychological drama of the world chess championship
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
On the other hand, Carlsen is well-known for his mental fortitude. It’s something that Vishy Anand, the previous champion, has talked about extensively. Carlsen’s style is often called “squeezing blood from a stone” because he will play equal-looking endgames and mentally exhaust his opponent into making a tiny mistake that he will convert into an advantage.
It was indeed a tough match-up for Nepo, and most knew it would end tragically for Nepo. Despite being an excellent player, he’s not on the same level as Carlsen.
I thought Caruana was a much better match up, and he held serve in the classical format. But Carlsen is strong in all three, hell, in all four formats. I think Firouzja has the potential to be a great match up. But it's just really hard to beat Magnus. He has Fischer's will to win with even more accuracy.
I watched Carlsen do this live last night. In his first game of the Rapid and Blitz World Championship[0]. Relentless pressure. Constantly demanding accuracy from his opponent until they blundered into a tactic.
- many draws -> "chess is dead", "yawn, another draw", "they should change the format"
- one player wins decisively -> "this isn't World Championship level", "how embarrassing for Ian", "someone else should play instead"
So you really need to have very very close wins (like game 6 this year) throughout the entire match to satisfy people. Realistically that's not going to happen very often.