Norwegian chess wizard Magnus Carlsen sits atop the FIDE rapid and overall world rankings, but the format in which he truly excels is classical chess. He’s the top-ranked classical player in the world, of course, though a more impressive metric of his dominance was his 125-game, two-year unbeaten streak which is comfortably the longest confirmed stretch without a loss in chess history. When Jan-Krzysztof Duda finally beat him last October, Carlsen immediately got his revenge and whooped him in just 26 moves the next day.
All of which is to say: Andrey Esipenko’s upset victory over Carlsen on Sunday morning at the Netherlands’ Tata Steel tournament ranks as a significant surprise. The 18-year-old grandmaster certainly has the pedigree of a future star, as he’s one of two teenagers ranked in the top-60, but he’s still establishing himself. I mean, this is his picture on the FIDE site right now.
arlsen became World Chess Champion in 2013 by defeating Viswanathan Anand. In the following year, he retained his title against Anand, and won both the 2014 World Rapid Championship and World Blitz Championship, thus becoming the first player to hold all three titles simultaneously, a feat he repeated in 2019. He defended his classical world title against Sergey Karjakin in 2016, and against Fabiano Caruana in 2018.
Known for his attacking style as a teenager, Carlsen has since developed into a universal player. He uses a variety of openings to make it more difficult for opponents to prepare against him and reduce the effect of computer analysis. He has stated the middlegame is his favourite part of the game as it “comes down to pure chess”. His positional mastery and endgame prowess have drawn comparisons to those of former world champions Bobby Fischer, Anatoly Karpov, José Raúl Capablanca, and Vasily Smyslov.