source: chess.com
Hello to all chess fans! Magnus Carlsen makes it double this year winning the Fide Blitz Championship together with the Rapid title he won earlier. He won the world blitz title for the ninth time and 20th world championship title across all three time controls. This is also the fifth time he won both rapid and blitz world titles.
The road to the title was not easy and filled with drama. In round 9, he lost to Arjun Erigaisi after a dubious opening choice. He allowed Arjun's Bishop to control f1-a6 diagonal and denied him from castling King side.
After the loss he smashed the table in rage reminiscent of his loss to Gukesh in June.
In round 12, he hung his rook against Fabiano Caruana and resigned after Fabiano captured the piece.
Magnus jumped from his chair when he realized his blunder.
In round 14, he lost another game on time after fumbling his pieces against Haik Martirosyan.
Maurice Ashley and the commentators were talking about resilience as a quality of world champions and Magnus showed it as he recovered and won games to qualify for the finals. He beat Fabiano Caruana in the semifinals and proceeded to defeat young Nodirbek Abdusattorov in the finals.
In a drawn endgame, Abdusattorov blundered with Bc1 while Bg7 would have kept drawing chances since Black's h pawn will promote on a light square.
Magnus quickly pounced with e3! winning on the spot.
There follows Bxe3 Bxg3! and Magnus won the title.
Conclusion
It was a pleasure to watch the games live with commentary. There were a lot of good games including in the women's section. I watched promising teens Faustino Oro and Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus beat hyper grandmasters. Surely, they will be the future stars in a few years. It was an amazing event to close the year.
Playing chess is great for the mind but let's not forget about physical activities. I recently committed to exercise and to keep me motivated, I joined actifit.io