World Chess Championship cold war: Stalemate not checkmate, yet
The World Chess Championship 2016 is currently underway between reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway and challenger Sergey Karjakin of Russia.
These 1990-born lads are competing in a 12-game match held between November 11 and 30 at South Street Seaport in New York City, with the two brainiac wrangling on the black and white squares for a prize fund of $1.1 million.
NYC is hosting the championship after a gap of almost 21 years - the last time it hosted was way back in 1995, when chess giant Garry Kasparov took on Madras Tiger Viswanathan Anand on the 107th Floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center.
Though VishyAnand fans across the world, especially in India, are missing the five-time World Chess Champion in action for the first time in nine years, chess aficionados and patzers have nothing to complain as the Carlsen-Karjakin match has become a celebrity event with the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Woody Harrelson in attendance, and providing the much needed attention and entertainment for the non-glamorous contest.
The gruelling match, which began in Manhattan on November 11, has been taut throughout with each thoughtful grandmaster making the right moves for teeny-weeny advantages to provoke his opponent to make silly errors and miscalculate winning positions.
Though many chess cognoscenti had predicted Carlsen (who is a fan of America's president-elect Donald Trump) to win the match "bigly", Karjakin (who is a staunch supporter of Russian president Vladimir Putin) has managed to show he is equally at task. One can sense that a Chess cold war is being fought on a checkered warfield in NYC.
Interestingly, the match is being held at a time of rising political and diplomatic tensions between the US, Russia and Western Europe. Dmitri S Peskov, a press spokesman for Putin, is in the US for moral support and has confirmed that the chess-loving Russian president is up-to-date with the results of the match.
The first seven games ended in a stalemate, wherein each player shared half a point each, before the Russian struck with black pieces in the eighth game to lead-in the match (4.5-3.5) after the Norwegian gave multiple opportunities to his foe and gambled in the hope of a desired winning result.
The drama that unfolded didn't just end on the chess board as the Mozart of Chess left the press conference fuming without making his post-game comments. The tension quite understandably was at its peak as it has previously been during a world championship match.
Viswanathan Anand was quoted saying in an interview about the incident: "When I saw the footage on YouTube with Magnus Carlsen sitting there at the press conference waiting for it to start, and Sergey outside, it brought back most strongly my memories of playing world championships."
In the ninth game, both players showed deep opening and middle game preparations in the Arkhangelsk variation of the Ruy Lopez opening, but no blood was drawn and the game ended in a draw after 74 moves (Draws are quite regular at world championships.)
In game 10, Carlsen got his mojo working and pressed hard throughout the lengthy tight game, which turned topsy-turvy for the Russian. It was a sweet thanksgiving for Carlsen as he thumped back into the match with a 75-move much needed victory to tie the match (5-5) going into the rest day.
The remaining two rounds of the 12 match series were played on Saturday and Monday respectively, but the players were back to where they began, with no progress being made. In Game 11, Carlsen playing with blackpieces was resourceful and managed to get something going, but it wasn't enough to take the full-point home.
The much anticipated decisive game 12 was nowhere close to decisive as the players played a quick theoretical 30-move draw which lasted for 35 minutes, something chess pundits weren't expecting from the endmost clash of such a profound match.
From the player's perspective, they looked content with splitting points with each master banking on their blitz skills to decide the fate of the match. With the scoreboard levelled at 6-6, the players would go on a four-game tie-break rapid match (each side will be allocated 25 minutes to complete a game) on Carlsen' s 26th birthday - Wednesday, November 30.
Will the birthday boy get lucky or will the Putin-endorsed Russian boy wonder take the throne back home after 10 years? Draws are a hum-drum routine at world championships until it gets down to the rapid/blitz tie-breakers with splashy games in the offing that would keep spectators on the edge of their seat.
Current world champion Carlsen entered the match as a hot favourite to retain the title for the second time, but the soi-disant Russian underdog has all along deemed himself the better player.
At a time when the world witnessed Donald Trump's bombshell victory, the Brexit platoon prevail, conceivably nothing should be astounding.
May the best player triumph.