AVOIDING ARMAGEDDON CHESS—CARLSEN VERSUS CARUANO. Magnus Carlsen has defeated Fabiano Caruano to retain his world chess championship. Peter Doggers reported on the match here at the chess.com site. The first twelve games were played with traditional chess time limits, and the result was twelve consecutive hard-fought draws. Games that are played with traditional time limits are now referred to as “classical games”.
Bryan Armen Graham described the rules for the tiebreak in the Guardian beforehand:…”the tiebreak will consist of a best-of-four rapid match with 25 minutes for each player with an increment of 10 seconds after each move. If that is not enough to break the deadlock, they will play up to five mini-matches of two blitz games (five minutes for each player with a three-second increment). If all five mini-matches are drawn, it will come down to one sudden-death ‘Armageddon’ match.”
Carlsen won the first three of the “rapid match” games to retain his title.
Apparently in match twelve Magnus Carlsen offered a draw despite occupying what many believed to be an advantageous position. Some people were very upset about it, however, in defense of the decision, others have pointed out he had been unable to consistently put away Caruano in the previous eleven matches despite having advantages at times.
By contrast, with the advantage in match 12, Caruano was more likely to accept the draw, and Carlsen is, at least on paper, much stronger in shorter time formats. Looks like it worked.