LONDON : Norwegian Magnus Carlsen won the world chess championship for a fourth time on Wednesday after winning three tie-breakers against U.S. rival and world number two Fabiano Caruana.
The 27-year-old defending champion, who collected a winner’s prize of 550,000 euros ($626,065), and his bespectacled opponent had drawn 12 out of 12 classical games through November.
That stalemate forced the pair into the faster-paced, best-of-four rapid tie-breakers.
“Frankly speaking, in the last couple of years my game hasn’t been great,” Carlsen told a news conference. “In that sense, this match and the classical portion was a step in the right direction.
“I think I played relatively well and Fabiano is just a very strong player…I feel like I have things to work on, clearly.”
The failure of Caruana, 26, to defeat Carlsen means the United States has not won the chess title since the enigmatic and volatile Bobby Fischer beat Russia’s Boris Spassky at the height of the Cold War in 1972.
