GM Magnus Carlsen won his third title at the 2023 Champions Chess Tour Finals on Saturday. He defeated GM Wesley So 2.5-1.5 and shared that the tour “came full circle” in the final game where he cracked So’s super-solid opening line.

Carlsen won three of the six legs across the year-long event, when finishing first in just one was enough to qualify for the Finals. Pocketing the $200,000 first prize, Carlsen continues to be the only person to win the Champions Chess Tour since 2021.

Carlsen won the first set on the previous day after scoring a point in game three with the black pieces. He said that his strategy against So is often to “hustle him. I use his sort of lack of aggression against him.”

Although So played with 96.43% accuracy on the previous day, Carlsen put up the nearly perfect 98.1%. Our statistics team awarded Carlsen an 89% chance of victory on Saturday.

So had to win two sets in order to turn the match around. On the plus side, GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave proved that it’s possible in the 2023 AI Cup. On the other hand, beating Carlsen on demand is a tall order in any context.

Playing timidly as “Solid So” wasn’t an option for the 2022 Global Champion. As Rozman put it: “We need to see a checkmate on the board today or it’s gonna be an early night.”

We need to see a checkmate on the board today or it’s gonna be an early night.

—Levy Rozman

Carlsen 2.5-1.5 So: Carlsen Wins Game 1, Falters In Game 2, Cracks The Semi-Tarrasch In Game 4

The Filipino-American grandmaster started the match with the same first move as game one on the previous day, 1.b3.

The flank opening didn’t seem to challenge Carlsen, who said afterward: “He felt a bit shaky in this game. I think he was on the back foot very early on.” Caruana was also critical of the opening choice:

Carlsen converted the advantage in model fashion, just once allowing a miracle defense 37.Rxb5! Rd1+ 38.Kf2! that was missed, and ultimately finished with a nicely-calculated sequence with just seconds on the clock. “Losing with White is the most heartbreaking thing as a chess professional. It’s demoralizing,” concluded Howell after the game.

Howell then called game two “one of the most chaotic games, one of the most unruly games, I’ve ever seen!” It was the most emotional and unstable game we’d seen from So or Carlsen in the CCT Finals.

One of the most chaotic games, one of the most unruly games, I’ve ever seen!

—David Howell

So won the rollercoaster time scramble, though after the game he said he wasn’t proud of it: “It’s such an ugly game. I probably made like six blunders or something.” He did, however, add a retort to Carlsen’s previous comment: “I was just hustling him in the end!”

Rozman put it well: “These guys looked human for the first time in this event!”. 41…Nd3?? by So was both a blunder and also the move that instigated the complications that confused Carlsen, who went from winning to losing in a matter of seconds:

Game three, and So’s last time with the white pieces, was a super-solid Nimzo-Indian and a super-solid draw. It was all down to game four, with Carlsen commanding the white army. 

The last game was quite literally worth $100,000, but So still found the time to check the Candidates race and post on X. When he arrived at the board for the last game, he also asked the arbiter if he could replace his rook with a queen before the game—a request that was not granted.

The final game started as a super-solid Semi-Tarrasch Variation of the Queen’s Gambit Declined. It was an innocent-looking queenless middlegame, which is also the kind of position the world number-one thrives in. GM Rafael Leitao annotates the final, decisive Game of the Day. (To be added soon.)

At the award ceremony, IM Danny Rensch and Chess.com CEO Erik Allebest gifted flowers to both of the finalists.

“I just want to congratulate Magnus for a well-deserved performance,” said So before Carlsen received the trophy, presented by VP of Esports Michael Brancato. 

Carlsen, who earned an additional $8,000 for winning eight matches in total, shared the personal significance of this final game:

I’m very, very happy with the way the event ended, the very last game, cause for me it sort of comes full circle. When we had the first Champions Chess Tour event in 2020, I think that was when I turned 30, and I lost to Wesley in the Final, that’s exactly when, sort of, this line in the Queen’s Gambit that Wesley played today… made it just difficult to play d4 at all. Like, it’s the Berlin versus d4. So to actually win a game, like decide the tour by winning a game against Wesley in that line, that’s really come full circle for me.

The 2023 Champions Chess Tour Finals (CCT Finals) is the closing event of the Champions Chess Tour, Chess.com’s most important event to date. The players meet in Toronto, Canada, in a thrilling last clash for the title. The Finals feature a $500,000 prize fund.

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