Why Magnus Carlsen felt Champions Chess Tour wasn't ideal prep for Norway Chess
With this win, Carlsen pocketed $150,000 and reaffirmed his status as one of the greatest players to have ever played this sport. MVL, meanwhile, confirmed his spot in the upcoming Esports World Cup by reaching the Grand Finals all the way through the losers' second round bracket. He beat Arjun Erigaisi, Levon Aronian, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Hikaru Nakamura to qualify for the title clash before losing against Carlsen.
The Norwegian maestro had to play the minimum amount of games to win the tournament, with none of the players able to enforce tiebreaks in any of the games, as Carlsen suggested it was not a very good practice for the upcoming 'Norway Chess'. His home tournament will feature some of the very strong players in classical chess, as Carlsen hoped for a good practice ground in CCT.
'I was really hoping that this event would be very good practice for Norway Chess, but it probably wasn't—because I played the minimum amount of games, more or less, in order to win the event.' Regarding the classical event that starts in Stavanger on Monday, he said he's done some prep, 'but not a whole lot, so we'll see how I stack up against some of the more serious players,' he said after winning the event.
The five-time World Champion was sublime throughout the event, taking an early lead. 'I think in these matches the first game always makes a big difference. Honestly, it felt to me in the second game that… he was a bit rattled and he made like four or five moves in a row which positionally I thought weren't very good… after that, it was kind of a lot easier than I expected,' he said.
Apart from Arjun and Jan Krzysztof Dud, who already qualified after reaching the playoffs round of this event, Vladislav Artimiev, Alireza Firouzja, Vladimir Fedoseev, Fabiano Caruana and Wei Yi confirmed their spots for EWC, set to happen in Saudi Arabia capitals Riyadh later this year. Earlier, Carlsen, Nakamura and Nepomniachtchi had already qualified after finishing in the top three of CCT's first leg event.
After the 12 players qualified for EWC, four more spots are left, which will be decided through the 'Last Chance Qualifier' (LCQ).
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