Isaac Week 9 - World Championship Match on Friday
This upcoming Friday will be day 1 of the Magnus Carlsen vs. Ian Nepomniatchi (Nepo) world championship match in chess. This match comes highly anticipated as Magnus has been world champion since 2013 and people have been waiting more than a year to watch this match due to postponements from the COVID.
The way that the world championship in chess works is that a group of the top players in chess qualified for a tournament called the candidates tournament. There are many ways to qualify for this tournament, but if you don't qualify, you won't be the person vying for the world championship title. After qualifying for this tournament, you must win the tournament in order to face the world champion (Magnus Carlsen) in the title match. Even winning this tournament is very hard to do because it consists of only the best players in chess. This past year, Nepomniatchi won the Candidates tournament, which is why he will face Magnus in the World Championship match.
In the World Championship Match, classical games are played (longer than 1 hour for each person with increments), and the winner is the person who gets the best of 24 matches. These 24 games will span over almost a month of time, and the winner is announced once a player either receives more than 12 wins, or in the case of a tie, the current world champion retains their title.
Magnus comes into this match a heavy favorite, but a lot of chess commentators say that Nepo might be the one to dethrone the king. I personally think that Magnus is going to wipe Nepo out of the park and that these commentators are giving Nepo too much credit to raise the anticipation. Magnus should be a heavy favorite and Nepo doesn't really have a chance in my opinion.
To prepare for this match, both players are training hard on the board and off the board. Magnus is famous for staying physically active and working out a lot because you need to have strong endurance for this match as it could be hours long and it has been found that chess players can burn up to 6,000 calories from one day of playing, which I think is pretty crazy.
The match will take place in Dubai, which is now available for Jewish people to travel to, so if anyone bought tickets, I just want to let you know that I'm free on November 26. The match will be streamed on YouTube additionally and can be found on the Chess24 YouTube channel, which is my personal favorite place to watch chess games, as I think their commentators do a great job. The link to the channel is down below.
Who do you think will win the Chess World Championship? Were you familiar with Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomnatchi before reading this post? Will you be watching this highly anticipated match?
Hey Isaac, this post was so detailed! I really am unaware of everything Chess (including how to play Lol) but it is so cool how complex the chess world is and how passionate you are about it. I had no idea about any of this. I really hope your favorite wins the Chess World Championship.
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