This is the last chance to get excited for the formidable World Cup chess



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Wednesday at 4 pm, in London, there will be the final of the World Championship of Chess: a final which, if you have been careful, lasts several days without being able to determine the winner. This time, however, it will be different: after 12 draws, having lasted 48 hours and counting 630 shots, the two chess players Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana will compete in a series of mini-games that, in theory, should facilitate the task. to arrive at a different result.

This is the first time in 132 years history of the World Chess Championship that we do not get a winner in traditional games. And it is also the first time since 1990 that the number 1 of the standings (Carlsen) and the number 2 (Caruana) are contested: it is then the Russians Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov, whose matches have marked a decade in the disciplined. For these features, the 2018 world chess championships attracted much more attention than the media average. Carlsen, 27 and Norwegian, has just won three consecutive World Championship wins, while Caruana, 26, and Italian-American, is in his first final. The two will share a million euros: 55% for the winner, 45% for the loser.

The final phase of the final will be as follows: there will be four games of 25 minutes, with an increase of 10 seconds after each stroke. If even these games, called "quick play", end with a draw or if Carlsen and Caruana win the same number of votes, we switch to flash games, or "blitz" in English. There will be two, then two more, then two more (up to ten in total), if again the score is equal: the rules are the same, but the time allotted to each player is only five minutes, with three more seconds. for each movement. If even after this step, the final will be united, you will get the game that calls in the jargon "Armageddon": white at five minutes, black four, and after the 60th shot each has a time increase of three seconds . If even this game ends even, the black wins.

The final came to this stage after a twelfth part during which chess commentators, who have the difficult task of conveying the emotions of an extremely static and boring discipline, called themselves "crazy". In fact, the game was quickly put in a very disadvantageous situation for Caruana, who found himself at one point with 25 minutes of race against the clock in less and the equivalent of two pedestrians less, according to the calculations of computers (in fact, they still had seven pedestrians each, but it is a calculation based on the advantages offered by the position of their pawns).

Do you want to see the three hours of the twelfth final, comment?

For reasons that the commentators had trouble explaining, however, Carlsen offered a draw to Caruana, who willingly accepted it. "I was not in the mood to have a punch," said Carlsen, who has the reputation of being a player who punishes his opponents after extending the matches up to the end. exhaustion. "I have to be very happy with the draw, I could not win," said Caruana. Many concluded that Carlsen, despite what computers said, was not so sure of winning, and especially that it was a good draw to bring the final to the so-called tiebreaker.

I am reconsidering my badessment of him in the rapids. Tie-breakers require huge nerves and he seems to lose his.

– Garry Kasparov (@ Kasparov63) November 26, 2018

Carlsen, in fact, is considered the best chess player in the world in fast play and in flash games, while Caruana ranks eighth and sixteenth in the standings. During his career, Carlsen always has a lot of control in stressful and stressful situations and therefore starts as a favorite. But there are also those who claim that he has lost the knell of the past: Kasparov, for example, speculated that he was losing control and that he was not considering it. as more favored. Carlsen himself, answering the question of who his favorite player is in history, replied: "Probably me, three or four years ago."

The site of statistical and probabilistic badysis Five Thirty Eight predicts that you will certainly play three of the first four quick games and that the final is resolved between the fourth and the first quick match. According to the statistical model, there is less than a 5% chance that you get the second lot and less than 0.1% of Armageddon. From the first lightning match, the second Five Thirty Eight Carlsen has more than 75 percent chance of winning. In any case, this year's final reopened the debate on the structure of the World Cup final, which many have asked to change over the next, in 2020, to avoid a series of such striking draws .

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