Explained: Why Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi shared World Blitz chess title

NEW DELHI: The 2024 World Blitz Championship final in Wall Street, New York culminated in a groundbreaking decision as Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi chose to share the coveted title.
This unprecedented outcome followed an intense, closely fought series of games that, if not anything, tested both players’ resilience and mastery under extreme time pressure.
The championship final saw Carlsen start strongly, seizing victory in the first two games.
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In the opener, he converted a precarious position where his queen and pawn outmanoeuvred Nepo’s rook pair.
Carlsen followed this with another commanding victory, this time playing White, setting the stage to retain his title with just a draw in Game 3.
However, Nepomniachtchi mounted an incredible comeback in the third game. Employing tactical brilliance in an endgame of rook pair versus rook and bishop, Nepo outplayed Carlsen and kept his chances alive.
With the score at 2.0-1.0, the pressure on Nepo to win Game 4 was immense.

Rising to the occasion, the Russian delivered a tactical masterstroke, sacrificing a knight to force a decisive win and level the match at 2.0-2.0, pushing the contest into sudden death.
The sudden-death rounds were marked by unmatched precision, with both players displaying over 98% accuracy—an incredible feat given the limited time control.
Despite the tension, the first game ended in a hard-fought draw. The second sudden-death game followed the same script. In the third, both players mirrored their earlier consistency, battling to yet another stalemate.

Following some discussions, FIDE and both players agreed on a historic compromise: to share the title. This marked the first time in the World Blitz Championship's history that dual winners were declared.
“It feels very good to share gold with Nepo. We reached a point where it had been a long day. We played many games, we had three draws and I felt that I could keep playing. But it was a nice solution to share the win, it was a good way to end it,” Carlsen, reflecting on the decision to share the title, told the Norwegian media NRK.