Magnus Carlsen retains title after winning lopsided match

This match was notable for a number of reasons:<p>1) Game 6 lasted 136 moves, making it the longest game in world championship history, surpassing the 124 move game 5 of Korchnoi-Karpov in 1978.<p>2) Carlsen&#x27;s victory in game 6 was also the first decisive match game (excluding tiebreakers) since game 10 of Carlsen&#x27;s defense against Karjakin in 2016. Carlsen&#x27;s defense against Caruana in 2018 featured 12 draws before moving into tiebreakers.<p>3) Carlsen won this match 7.5-3.5, making it the most lopsided victory since Capablanca defeated Lasker 9-5 in 1921.

Even if the quality of play in this match has been not great, one thing I really enjoyed was the extremely high class of commentary.<p>Caruana, Giri, Anand, Svidler and Nakamura have been doing commentary (simultaneously!) throughout the match. It has been a real treat, I don&#x27;t believe any match before has had such a deep level of live analysis. I have had five different streams open at times just to listen to them all :)

Game 6 was pretty tight and pretty good. You have to realize they were playing the last moves after midnight and they were playing them on increment, 30 seconds a move, basically rapid. Nepo&#x27;s &#x27;blunder&#x27; is an extremely natural looking move, 130. .. Qe6 and it only loses in 49 moves. But as was predicted before the match, if Nepo lost one it&#x27;d be an avalanche.<p>Nepo only squeezed in because the Candidates tournament was so weird with Covid and all. Caruana again, Ding Liren or Firouzja would have been much stronger opponents. I think the 18 year old Iranian phenom and world #2 Alireza Firouzja is the champion in waiting. But Magnus is still king and even Magnus would take another 10 years of dominance to claim GOAT from Kasparov.

It&#x27;s cool how big chess has become in Norway. Since Carlsen&#x27;s first WC match, there&#x27;s been live coverage on TV, streams from big online newspaper etc. And internationally it has also looked good the last few times. This year there were lots og different online streams of different styles, many gaining a huge view count.<p>And somehow, watching the rapid WC at the end of December has become sorta a Christmas tradition for many in Norway. It&#x27;s a kind of slow TV that works really well.

Is it just me, or is Chess becoming a thing lately? I&#x27;ve recently started to really enjoy watching it (kinda hate playing it, haha), so maybe it&#x27;s just because I&#x27;m paying attention?

Felt like a boxing match where Carlsen knocked Nepo down in the 6th game, and after that he just wasn&#x27;t the same boxer&#x2F;chess player. The next 3 decisive games had blunders by Nepo that would be bad for even the #1000 chess player.

I feel sorry for Ian. That c5 move totally destroyed him. Some people don&#x27;t understand how elementary mistake that was. And to make it in slow chess... I hope he recovers from that and goes on to win some tournaments. But as for the next candidates match, I think Alireza or Giri have the best chance to win it.

Ha! I didn&#x27;t know that Dubov was in in MC team :D What a legend. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=r_kW-HMNYRA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=r_kW-HMNYRA</a>

Doesn&#x27;t really feel like this whole World Championship cycle hit great heights. Ding disappointed in the Candidates, Ian collapsed in the match. But that&#x27;s life. I hope we get good results in the 2022 Grands Prix, especially now there&#x27;s no qualification by rating.

Game 6: Incredible chess.<p>c5: Not so much :-(<p>The pressure of a Word Championship match is not to be underestimated.

It is so typical of Norwegians to be good.

wish there was a spoiler tag, bummer. Well, i was only like 20+ hours away from catching up