World Chess Championship: Showdown In New York

Two record breaking juniors, one sky-rocketed his career in his youth the other suffered a stagnant era. The first World Chess Championship to be played between the best in the world against a powerful candidate. The Champion Magnus Carlsen will defend his crown against a rapidly growing Sergey Karjakin.  They have come of age in an era of super-strong chess engines representing a new front line for the future of the ancient sport.

New York, might just be the perfect place to host the championship this year, with over a hundred years of chess history in its midst. The home of the former World Champion and arguably one of the best chess players to set foot on earth, Bobby Fischer. A trace of the cold war tension can be felt as well, Carlsen as the first champion from the west since Fischer and Karjakin holds the responsibility of the whole Russian nation.  

Recent Stats

Carlsen’s previous loss came in the opening game of the Bilbao Masters against Hikaru Nakamura and is yet to drop any points since then. Out of the eight games he has lost, most of them were in Blitz competition. He lost three consecutive games in the GCT Blitz Paris this year against Levon Aronian, Fabiano Caruana and Anish Giri. However the only other players to have defeated the Norwegian wonder-kid in the last 50 games were Hikaru Nakamura and Maxime Vachier Lagrave.

On the other hand, Karjakin’s record has not been so great in the last fifty games. He has lost a couple of more games than Carlsen and sometimes to opponents rated lower than 2700. Definitely, not the best of signs ahead of a World Championship game.

Head to Head

Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin have grown up playing each other in the junior levels. A total of 47 games have been played between the two since 2005. If we look at their overall career Karjakin has always ended up a little short against the Norwegian.

Karjakin and Carlsen in their junior years

However, that margin has only gone wider in recent years. The record in classic games stands in favour of Carlsen with four wins, 16 draws and just the one loss.

Sitting just a week away from the World Chess Championship, Magnus Carlsen enjoys the upper hand. But, Sergey Karjakin can put the underdog stature to some good use and shock the world to bring back the Championship to Russia.