MAGNUS CARLSEN WINS WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP WITH A 1% CHANCE

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the final recap video of the year 2025, the finale of the World Blitz Championship. Three minutes with a two-second bonus every time you make a move. Here is the format. Today, both the open and the women's sections will finish the open part of the tournament where everybody plays everybody and then the top four people make it into a semi-final style knockout. Going into today, all eyes are on Magnus Carlsen who trails the field by a little bit but he has a few rounds to catch up. Today, we saw him clothesline another set of pieces and then get forfeited in the game. We're gonna take a look at that. That's gonna be the very first game and then we are going to bear witness to one of the greatest days of chess in a very long time. A very long time. This is what we all love. Buckle up. This might be a 50-minute recap. Throw me up on the TV. Alright, put me up on some computer somewhere. Listen in the headphones. Sit back, relax, and enjoy. You are about to witness greatness on many, many levels. I have like 25 different games to show you. Let us kick things off with the game between Hayk Martirosyan from Armenia and Magnus Carlsen. This is round number 14. There are only six games to play today to catch up to everybody. Here we go. So this one opens up with Magnus employing a Peart's defense. He has played this quite a bit. He goes for e5 early on in the opening. d5 from white. The game gets very locked. It gets very closed and Magnus strikes with h6 and f5. Typical Peart's defense behavior. You know, you're always looking for some sort of play like also typical in King's Indian structures. White plays b4. Very, very imbalanced game where white is advancing on the left side, on the queen side, and it looks like Magnus just kind of has a free roll. He's just going to go g4, h5, etc. Get all his pieces and basically checkmate. It's never quite that simple. He commits a minute of thinking to the move g4. And before you know it, you know, even though he's winning, he doesn't have a lot of time. 15 seconds on the clock. This is, for Magnus standards, this is horrendous time management. Like, generally, he is not tanking this much time. And so what ultimately happens in this game is chaos. Even though he has a totally dominant position, because he has no time to actually play through any of these moves, he has to maintain his time above 10 seconds. Anything below that is the danger zone, not just to make a blunder, but also to not be able to put the pieces on the board properly. Queen a5, knight takes f3, knight h2. He is totally winning, and he is converting, but Hayek is not going down without a fight, keeping tabs and keeping close. And now the advantage is 0.1. Magnus not even better. He doesn't have a lot of more opportunities to convert these positions. Queen a6 check, queen to d3. He grabs the pawn on e6. Hayek, great job, by the way. 25 seconds on the clock. Really, really expertly done. He's doing an amazing job. Queen e6, right? We're getting close now. Now, this scramble of this game is going to go on for quite some time. Another 20 moves of king hunting. He can't believe he's not winning here. Suddenly it's like Magnus' king is getting mated. Hayek plays rook h3. That's apparently a mistake. 10 seconds on the clock. Absolute pandemonium. The black continues to hunt the king. It's probably just a draw, but absolute madness breaks out on the 69th move of the game. It's equal. So why does it say lost in one? Magnus Carlsen played the move rook to g3, and the rook itself, I cannot show this to you here, flew across the board and knocked over all of these pieces. I mean, to be honest, it was an expertly done bowling trick. The rook bulldozed all of these pieces, so all of them fell over, and Magnus, look at his time. By the time he played the move, he had four seconds. He had four seconds to clean up all of the pieces, and he tried. He kind of snuck in a clock press, but you can't do that because all the pieces are knocked over, and he wouldn't have a chance to pick them all up. So he actually lost this game by ruling because he would have lost on time. You cannot make a move and knock over all of your opponent's pieces. So Magnus Carlsen, in his campaign to make a comeback in this tournament, loses the first game of the day once again because he was unable to put a piece on a square safely. Like, I don't know if they oiled up all his pieces, or maybe oiled up his fingers, or maybe oiled him up. I have absolutely no idea what's going on over there, but two times now this has happened to, I don't know, old age. Really, 35? What is it? I mean, it's completely crazy. So he goes down in the first game of the day. He is now in like 20th place. 20th. With only five games to go, he's trailing by like two, two and a half points, and I'm about to tell you who he's trailing. Alright, I'm about to tell you who he's falling behind. So a player that has had an absolutely incredible tournament is none other than your favorite Gotham Chess lookalike, Fabiano Corowana. Middle name Luigi, by the way. Not just an Italian stereotype, literally Luigi. Just incredible. Grishuk. Grishuk, multiple-time Blitz World Champion, 2,800 player, absolute beast, and always at the top of these tournaments. But recently, I mean, it's, you know, the truth is, the younger you are, the more your stamina lasts in these events. And Fabi was just incredible. Fabi applied sustained pressure to every single opponent that he played. He made excellent decisions under time trouble, which really is what Blitz is all about, ultimately. And even though some of these games were messy, which they get when you get below 10 to, you know, 20 seconds, and Grishuk did an excellent job, Fabi regained his composure, defended his king, and ultimately, this was the fatal mistake, F6. I'm not sure what was missed here. Maybe Grishuk thought he was surviving in this position. Here, he actually needed to take back, open up his king, and somehow try to defend himself. Absolutely not easy to do. Fabi secures the everything shot, hits the queen, hits this, game over. Fabiano Caruana playing catch-up to the leader of the tournament, who is none other than this man, the one who I'm about to show you, Arjun Aragicy. Arjun Aragicy is just an incredible, like, I don't even know what to say. I mean, he was so close in the rapid. He actually got a medal in the rapid. He tied for second. I think the tie breaks, he got bronze. Third place, I think silver went to Artemyev. Aragicy is so good in rapid format. It is shocking, and I am showing you the game against the player that just defeated Magnus. Magnus kind of beat himself in that game, but, you know, he needed to be brought to that point of sliding a rook across the board by none other than his opponent, Hayek Martirosyan. In this game, Arjun completely traps his opponent's rook in the center of the board. It can't go here, here, here, here, here, here, or here. He doesn't take it, though, instead offering up a potential kingside attack. Hayek tries to get some counterplay with b5. The rook was lost, and Arjun brought it back, but, of course, it's blitz, so now, like, you know, the computer is going to judge everybody very harshly. Arjun conjures up a kingside attack, very stable little position near his king, letting his opponent self-destruct under the time pressure, and, well, that's going to happen, because it's blitz. Bd5, e4, beautiful conversion, picking up the two rooks, bringing it back, f4, e5. What a coordinated game. I mean, just a nice little peaceful queen's gambit trading a couple of center pawns against the guy that just beat Magnus, and then he just slowly improves his position, and out of nowhere, black's rook is just trapped in the center of the board, just like absolutely nothing there. He just wins. Arjun Eragaisi, like, absolutely seamless victory. I will show you some more, by the way, games. Arjun Eragaisi was an absolute monster in the open section part of this tournament. He got first place by, like, two points. Like, we're just going to leave that there. Arjun was scary. Arjun won four in a row on the last day. He drew Yuengi, beat Hayek, Liu Xianglei, Javakir Sendarov, and Timur Javav. He was undefeated, and I think he finished the blitz with 15 out of 19. 15 points! He lost one freaking game in 19. Performance rating 2904. This dude was stratospheric in the blitz. It was not even possible to contend with him. So basically, it was everybody else. All right, it was, you know, can Magnus play catch-up or what? And yeah, I mean, he just left absolutely no doubts. Now, meanwhile, Magnus has stumbled all the way down. Like, they're lucky he still got camera rights to board one when Magnus is playing in the World Rapid Blitz. He is always sitting on the top board because he's by far the most famous, and he's the highest rated. So even if he's, like, struggling, he's going to be on the top board. Imagine if he was, like, playing over there, you know, by the toilets where they put, like, you know, people on board 40 and 50. So he's playing Rudik This is a Russian grandmaster. I actually thought he was an IM. I guess he recently became GM. I might be mixing it up because they have a bunch of IMs that I play on the internet, but maybe some of these guys have actually become GMs in the last few years. Now, Magnus basically has to beat absolutely every single person that he's playing. He cannot afford any more draws. He has to win every single game. So to do that, he's going to start playing some weird stuff. So he and then he just, like, carves up the middle, jumps in with the horses. All right, kicking down the door, kicking the opponent in the face, whatever horses do. Wins a pawn and now is like, all right, I got to win this game. I mean, I'm the freaking best player in the world. I got to stop throwing pieces around. I'm up a pawn. Yeah, Magnus Carlsen up a pawn in an endgame is really, really bad news. You're about to see a lot more games today where Magnus Carlsen not up a pawn in an endgame is really bad news. Magnus Carlsen up a pawn in an endgame, really bad news. Brings the king, brings the knight, jumps in, centralizes, makes Black push all his pawns, goes on to win those pawns. And like, like, like literally like taking candy from a baby. All right. A really big baby, the rated 2600. I mean, he just completely outplays his opponent. Not even, not even a shadow of a doubt. Now, while Magnus is playing catch up. All right. Daniel Dubov is just like, Daniel Dubov has a strategy in this tournament. And the strategy is don't lose. Play games. Don't lose. All right. Bishop takes e5. Nice and solid. All right. Everything good. H3. Okay. Rook e8. Nojebek Abdus-Satorov doing his thing as well. Dubov just keeping it nice and solid. Now, this is a unbelievable situation here. Giving up the knight for the bishop. Like, I don't know why we wouldn't try to trade the bishops. Instead, Nojebek gives Dubov the bishops. And Dubov, Dubov with the initiative of the bishops is a real problem because he goes for some counterplay here. But in the dynamics, you know, Dubov just rook c1, rook c7. Excellent play up 40 seconds. He's so fast. He plays so well on intuition. And he comprehensively outplays Nojebek. He's just up two pawns. It feels like he's up like 10 pawns. And black has three seconds. So, that's not going to work. Now, we just have an endgame where white has like 900 pass pawns. And you just saw Magnus win an endgame up some pawns. Well, here is, you know, Dubov winning an endgame up also a lot of pawns. Nojebek goes here, but he's going to lose every single pawn. So, Nojebek is virtually out of the competition, right? Dubov, meanwhile, just like crushing it. I think he hasn't lost the game. In rapid, he lost one game. Yeah, this was round 15. Dubov just absolutely on fire, like on plus seven, meaning he's won seven more games than he's lost. And he's lost zero games. So, that's pretty cool. So, he wins another game. Nojebek rapidly falling out of the picture. Meanwhile, you know, Magnus doing his thing. He's trying to launch, come back, make it back into the tournament, and so on and so forth. So, let's move past this game. Let's see if Magnus... Now, the games that Magnus was winning to make it back from the, you know, from the open part of the tournament, the Swiss, where everybody plays everybody. I'm gonna just click through some moves of this game. Magnus playing Buzheng Ji. Now, you might not know Buzheng Ji, because he doesn't play in as many tournaments as, you know, some of the other stars of nowadays. World Cup Chess, either 2017 or 15 or 19, one of those years, but maybe it was like 10 years ago, knocked out Magnus Carlsen from the World Cup. All right. You know what they say, an elephant never forgets. Magnus is like a Norwegian Viking, but whatever. We're just gonna call him an elephant for simplicity. Well, in this game, there was absolutely nothing. Buzheng Ji played incredibly fast. Look at the time management. 2.33 to 48 seconds. Magnus cannot afford a half a point. There is no half a point to be afforded here. It's not there. You cannot afford a half a point. I have said that multiple times already. This is the endgame, and Black has 30 seconds, and I'm just gonna click through these moves, because there is no business here for Black to do what he's about to do. Magnus Carlsen dances around with his horse, and he's winning. How is he winning? I don't... How's that possible? Well, you had to keep this pawn protected. The second you keep the... you get off protecting this pawn, now, Bishop here, this is a fork of everybody. Your king cannot protect both pawns. A moment of a... just a quick lapse. Magnus grabs the pawn with less than 20 seconds on the clock, and runs out of the store at full speed, winning the rest of the pawns. The horse incredibly tricky in the time scramble. How he's winning these endgames, it's just... it's just magic. It's got to be the Magnus effect. By the way, one guy at the top of the standings, who I am featuring once again, this complete madman, lunatic, Arjun Aragicy, the joker of chess. I did my joker impression a couple of recaps ago. You can go back. The positions that he's getting from the opening. I mean, it looks like bombs are going off near his king, and he's just like, I'm gonna make this pencil disappear. Ta-da! And he just plays h6. You know, it looks like Javahir is checkmating him, sacrificing pieces in front of his king, and he's just like, come get some. It's a very poor choice of words. Just throws him off the balcony. Like, Queen h6, Rook c7 defends the king. Apparently this position is equal, but it's really hard to figure out how it's equal. It's a draw now. Queen b4, he's like, draw. Ain't no draw here, and he doesn't find the best move. He doesn't find the best move. Now you reach check, come back to play a little bit of defense, and in the chaos, in the scramble, the cocoon defense of every piece protecting the king. The king runs away, but it is actually White who, in the long run, is going to get mated or lose the endgame. And in the scramble, sacrifices the queen because the pawn mates the king. Rook e1 is a threat. Queen d1 is a threat. The game is over. Queen d2 found in two seconds. No wonder this man won the group. He was on another level. And so now, may I take you to the most important round of the day. First of all, first of all, at some point, Magnus had to play MvL. MvL is a world blitz champion. Magnus goes into a Sicilian. MvL plays a sideline of a Sicilian. Look at this. White has four pieces developed, by the way, but the position is equal because this is the Sicilian defense. MvL also had an incredible day playing very inspired chess, playing, dare I say, world champion caliber level chess. But in this game, he took a few too many liberties, and Magnus got a very imbalanced position of bishops versus knights, where one guy's king is just not as safe and is going to get pulled out of the king's side of the king's house. King's side is right side of the board. Going to get pulled out of the king's castle and just bludgeoned, all right, in an open field. a4, it's just a matter of time. It would be a miracle if this game made it into an endgame. Qe4, it's kind of an endgame, but it's a very aggressive endgame now. Black's still hammering down here. Rc4, Rc8. It's impossible to defend this position, like Rg3, g6, and ultimately, Black will win the endgame because he's creating all the outside pass pawns, he's creating all the pressure. Now the damaged pawn structure, h5, and it is, it's not a miracle that it made it to an endgame, it's a miracle that White hasn't lost yet. His pieces are all tied together. MvL is playing this game with tied shoes, like he's hopping around the board, he's not walking. Meanwhile, Magnus is just smashing, look at this, just, I mean, like you didn't have a move. You couldn't move this, you can't move this, you can't move this, you can't move this, you can't move this, you can't move this, you can't move this, and if you move this, I play g3, h4. Bro, he made MvL tie his shoes together and push them off the top of the eiffel. Like, I mean, look at this position. Magnus roars back with four straight wins after throwing his rook across the board and clotheslining all the pieces, making another meme moment. You best believe I'm posting about it. Just incredible business out here. All the pieces completely tied together, so he beats MvL. MvL was, like, very close to the top, all right? Now, that's an incredibly important win, and now comes another very incredibly important win. This game between Nihal Sarin and Danil Dubov, extremely important for the overall standings. Nihal Sarin, one of the best speed players in the world, all right? This is always an intriguing matchup. There's a very viral clip on YouTube of Nihal getting a queen sacrificed against him by Danil. It's a very fun clip, and actually, in the clip, Hayik Marsirosyan, who was in the earlier part of this recap, looks at him like, damn. So, I'm sure Nihal definitely wants to get that back. He's trying to keep the queen on the board to sacrifice it a little bit later, and from the early part of this game, up a minute and a half, just totally outplaying Danil, right? Like, this pawn's going to go up the board, he's going to bring the queen back, just absolute dominance. You're not going to have to sack the queen here to win. Queen d3, knight h5, h3. Super stable position, playing very confidently. Rook f1, poking at the black position. Black's position looks absolutely miserable, utterly miserable, but Danil only needs a pawn or two to get a little counterplay going. It looks like there's nothing here at all. Queen f3, f5. It is over. Hopelessly lost. Nihal is just going to convert this game. It doesn't even matter that it's a time scramble. White is only up a pawn, but it feels like seven pawns. All right, Danil can't find the over-the-board resign button. He doesn't remember where it is. Nihal winning every single pawn that he has, but a few moves later, Nihal blunders a draw. He blunders a draw. Plus seven, plus seven down the drain. Danil is one of the people that can remove Magnus from the top spots. There's four people. Rook c8, but now Nihal begins advancing. King c3, a4. It's still a draw. It's still equal. This position is still equal, but apparently, now it's not. Somewhere here, instead of king b8, Danil had to keep his rook on e78. He just had to keep his rook there, always protecting the king. In this small misstep, now white gets connected pawns on the sixth rank, which apparently is also wrong. Apparently, that's not the way to win, but it's really hard to defend this position. Black ends up losing his pawns, and this is just over. This is over because you play rook e5, you walk your king over here, and this is the end of the game. b8, rook a5. Magnus' win against MVL and this game against Danil allows Magnus to propel himself into the top four. A four-game winning streak on demand, and another person he has to thank for this is Arjun Aragicy. Arjun Aragicy never left the top spot, so the top spot was gone. Nobody could fight for the top spot. It was three people remaining who had to fight to make it into the top four. Because Arjun kept winning, there were no doubts, no tie breaks, right? If you make it into the top four, it's like there's a tie break system to break the tie, and so he makes it into the top, and basically, as long as Magnus does not lose this final game, this is round 19. 19 out of 19 rounds. As long as he does not lose this game, he's probably going to make it into the top, all right? So, and what happens? We get a very boring little alapin, which is the opening of choice when Magnus doesn't want to lose, and he's not going to lose. It's a dynamic queen-end game. It ends by repetition. Magnus more or less has secured the position. After being like two, two and a half points out of it, losing a game with a piece obliteration, the only people that can maybe catch him are right here. MVL, Nepo. You might remember, there's a very famous game, Nepo-Fabi, Candidates 2024. After the game, Nepo apologized to Fabiano Caruana because he was defending against Fabi the entire time, and he ended up ruining Fabi's chances to make it to the candidates because he drew a winning position that Fabi had. Well, check out this game. In this game, if MVL wins, he is a final four. He's in the final four, and if he draws, it's all up to the tiebreaks. Throughout this game, the game was very back and forth. It was very double-edged. I'm not going to go into the specifics because I don't want to make a three-hour recap. The summary of this game and a lot of these Blitz games is they come down to clutch decision-making with 30 seconds or less on the clock. We have a queen-and-pawn endgame, queen-and-rook endgame, white's pawn structure, horrendous. Doubled A pawns, doubled F pawns, can't move the G pawn, can't move the E pawn. Black has literally the worst possible pawn to defend against, and another passed pawn, and white has a weak king. But Nepo is so clutch, he held this endgame for like 30 moves. He defended this horrendous queen-and-pawn endgame. MVL was queening his H pawn. He checked, checked, checked, checked, checked, checked, checked, checked, checked, checked, checked, checked, and he lost the pawn. And MVL regained his composure, wins all the pawns, and here they trade the queens into a losing out. I mean, this is winning for Black. Queen b5. It's 3-2. The pawns, 3-2. You just win the endgame. It's 3 pawns to 2. The king goes to c3. Now here with Black, you just go king c6 or king d6, and you win the endgame. You just have an extra pawn. The king d4, e5. King here, king here. Slowly, you just convert this endgame. MVL goes here with a very simple idea to go king a5, king a4, and take the pawn. It's winning, of course. No, it's not, because this, this, this, and what happens is he doesn't go for these pawns. He goes for that one, and all of a sudden, despite Black being up a pawn, the pawns are like sitting ducks. They're just gonna get eaten. They're gonna get eaten. Nepo, for the second time in two years, ruins the chances of somebody to qualify for something. MVL ties for the final spot, but instead, it goes to NdB with 13 points. NdB finished the day just like Magnus. Steps away from elimination. Moments away from elimination, and he makes it back into the top four. So, the top four are Arjun Eragaisi, who won the tournament 15 out of 19. Magnus Carlsen, 13 and a half. Fabiano Caruana, 13 and a half, and a massive tie for 13 points. Massive tie, okay? Like, massive, and the only man who made it is NdB. Crazy. Absolutely insane day. Maxim was like three good moves away. Maxim was a king move away from making it into the final four. A king move away. Just insane, and so, we get fireworks. Magnus, Fabiano, Caruana. Here we go. 25 minutes into the recap. We are into the final four. This is how they do it now. They've been changing the format. Last year, it was a final eight. This year, it's a final four. Match started very tense with a couple of close draws, and in this second game, Fabi goes d3. e4, e5, d3, trying not to play any theory, trying to play whatever under this is, and grabs the bishop with Na4. Magnus obliges. Take the dark-squared bishop. I know there's kids watching. I don't particularly care. I'm going to trade these pieces and put all of these pawns on dark squares because I had a dark-squared bishop, right? I had a dark-squared bishop. c3, Ne7, Be2. Both boys are developing their pieces, and now one of the boys is going to play f5, striking at the center. You have to take. You cannot allow the pawn to go to f4. Now we have this. Overall position is in the balance, but it's kind of shocking that white doesn't have an advantage here, but yeah. I mean, this one pawn dominates both knights from coming to the d4 square. You put your rooks in the middle. You play f3. I don't know. Position looks very easy to play with white. Very easy to play. The problem is it's also easy to play with black. Not because the position is easy to play, but because the guy on the other side is literally the greatest chess player who's ever lived, and so he knows where the pieces go better than most people. Fabi, meanwhile, continuing to make some improvements, and in the Clearly, this move is a problem because suddenly f3 becomes a huge weakness. Fabi kind of absent-mindedly played g3 with the intention to play maybe some Kg2 or stop Nf4. Apparently, it's a huge weakness, and Magnus immediately jumps on it, and despite being a pawn down, he didn't even have to take. He had like Rd8 and Nf7 to completely convert his advantage. He continues to apply pressure to Fabi, and guess what? It's Magnus Carlsen in an endgame. You have Magnus in a freaking endgame once again. We have seen him do it. Look at this. He sacks a pawn to go to the outskirts of the board. The position's equal, and he's down 40 seconds. Nb1, Nc3. He's got them right where he wants them. He got you thinking that maybe you have a little something here. Fabi, great job in the time scramble. This is just an equal rook and pawn endgame, right? Wrong. You had to play rook. I don't even know. Literally, this trade is bad. How the freak? How? How are you supposed to know that? This innocuous pawn trade into this rook endgame is losing, and suddenly, Magnus is king and rook. Look how instructive this is. This king is the problem. Dominated. This king, act of the C-pawn, promoting Magnus Carlsen, doing it the way he always freaking does it. Absolutely ridiculous. I was looking at these games, staring at the screen like a baby watching Cocomelon or whatever people watch nowadays. How did he just do this? He just beat Fabi with 20 seconds on the clock. He played the last 30 moves of this game with no time. He had 20 seconds. He got to 20 seconds on the clock on the 31st move and went 30 more moves, playing every move in two seconds, and he wins. Can he put it away in the very next game? He's got the white pieces, Fabi, and a must win. Fabi is always so close to beating Magnus, and he just doesn't. Every single freaking time, he's the only player that drew him in every game of their world championship match. Fabi in this game with the black pieces, he has to create winning chances. It's not going to be easy. He's sacrificing a pawn in the middle of the board. He's just giving it away. There's a pawn hanging. Magnus isn't taking it, and for good reason, because out of nowhere, he bulldozes the black position. He has a queen coming. He has a rook. He has a knight. He has a bishop. This is about to be very, very bad. This is about to be extremely bad. Fabi plays knight e5, bishop f7, bishop back to e6, and black is just lost. Black is just lost. He's down a pawn, and he's down on position. This is not going to reach an end game. Queen f3, pawn takes f6. At the end of the day, one guy has a horse. Converting these winning positions and these winning situations in the match. Back to back, 96% accuracy performances against Fabiano Caruana, who is knocked out and will finish third, fourth, along with the loser of the next match. Magnus was not even supposed to be in the final four. He's just absolutely mind-blowing. He is a finalist in the 2025 World Blitz Championship, and he awaits the winner of this match. Now, Arjun Eragaisi just scored 15 out of 19 and didn't lose a game. Didn't lose a game. I don't know how anybody's supposed to beat this dude, all right? Sicilian defense right on cue. Nice little four knight Sicilian, a3 tricky line. All right, now here black can do several things. You can play d6, you can play d5. He goes for bishop b7, which is a move, and now he just plays this is like one of these hedgehog style Sicilians. Everything is on the sixth rank. Bishop takes f6. There was a sacrifice here, by the way. You could have sacked on h6, but Eragaisi from the opening looking good. He's got the bishops. He's got a typical, very dynamic Sicilian position. Queen c4. Let's see him play with confidence. Knight d5. Oh my goodness. Noderbeck not looking to go down without no fight here. We have a dynamic end game on our hands here between the young men. Rook c6, rook d6. Pawn takes. Noderbeck is just down a pawn. He's taking inspiration from Magnus. A pawn down end game, but keeping things pretty active. Blocking on a dark square, when suddenly the pawn is lost. He just straight up baits him into pushing it, trades it, and now the position is equal. Except white is up 50 seconds. That could come back to bite, even if you're young. So the king is doing a little zigzag, a little dance. Rook d6, rook d4, knight d5, king d2. Yo, suddenly this looks terrible for black. The pawns are terrible. The g-pawns, the queen side pawns are collapsing. He does go for very good counterplay, but suddenly Noderbeck wins a pawn. Solidifies his position. Black has five seconds. Nothing good has ever happened with five seconds, and nothing good is about to happen with five seconds. It's about to take some 70 moves, but Noderbeck coordinates beautifully. Activates his king. The black king is miserable. Wins another pawn. Scrambles into the sixth and seventh rank, and he's winning because he's just converting the rook endgame. Look at this. 80 moves it takes. It takes 80 moves and expert technique and patience and draining the nervous system of and Noderbeck converts. He converts, and not only did he convert this game, he converted every single game that he played against Arjun Eragaisi. Just unbelievable. He won the first game. It took 80 moves. In their second game, where he had the white pieces now, sorry, I skipped a game. This was the second game. In the first game that they played, he was with the black pieces. It was an exchange slav. It was an equal game. When I loaded the game, when I loaded the first game, there was an error and the board was broken. I had to reload it. That was their second game, but regardless, it doesn't really matter. Arjun started with the same dynamic play from the opening, an imbalanced position, and it looked like typical Arjun-isms. He's just going to outplay his opponent. Noderbeck was so patient in this match. He was so patient. Every game was won through blood, sweat, and tears. Nothing was easy. The first game, he grinded Arjun down in this position, just like rooks, pawns, a little bit of activity. He took all the fun out of these positions for Arjun, and he just fought him. Look at this. First game as well, 40 second time advantage. He just forced himself to play fast. He carried that momentum from the open, and Abdulsatorov swept Eregeisi. He swept him. He won the first two games, and then their last game, it was a draw, but it was only a draw because it was minus five, and then Noderbeck did what they do. He offered the gentleman's draw. When you're about to eliminate your opponent in chess and a draw gets you through, you don't always have to play for the win. This is what they do. Yes, these games are rated, but it's like a thing that they do. He would have three-owed Arjun, which is insane because Arjun didn't lose a game for two days, and here comes Noderbeck, three-nothing, setting up an incredible final, setting up a final that we didn't know we needed because literally three hours prior, the odds that this would be the final were probably less than like three percent, and here we go, and here we go. Just absolutely amazing stuff. So, Karlsen Abdulsatorov is the final of the 2025 World Blitz Championship. Magnus has always been extremely complimentary, by the way, of Abdulsatorov. He respects him a lot. He thinks he's a very good fighter. He likes, you know, he thinks he has a very good nervous system. Queen's Gambit accepted. By the way, Women's Championship also coming up. We'll get covered. Bishop e7. Queen's Gambit accepted. Both guys developing c5, typical stuff. We have a trade, and we play a symmetrical pawn structure. Magnus, a lot of experience here, slowly improving the position. Bishop f3 looking to trade. I mean, everything so far going in white's favor, including a time advantage. e4 here, very strong move from white. Plays knight f5, flashy move. Gets a slightly better structure and clearly has the better bishop, right? He has a very strong bishop, but then he trades it. Magnus trades and argues that in the long run, this knight is actually better than this bishop. This bishop is not an offensive piece, and Magnus will grind down his opponent in this knight versus bishop position, which normally looks like it, you know, bishop is better than the knight. That's what everybody says, blah, blah, blah. Not always. King f8. Knight a5 looks possible, but I, for whatever reason, I guess it's probably not bishop c6. Maybe you go a4. He plays rook c2, and let's see if he's able to, you know, do the endgame magic on an orgy bracket that has worked on everybody else. He goes for this pawn, and now just has to queen, right? Typical stuff. Magnus doing what he does. Rook f2 though. What about his king side pawns? Has he gotten himself in a little bit too far? King c7, apparently the wrong move. It's a little sharp here. He has to back out of the position. Instead, he commits forward, but here there's hesitation from Magnus. Comes back. That's not typical. It's not typical Magnus. Where's the h5? Where's the knight to f4? At least attack something. He goes here. Suddenly, Norderbek Abdulsatorov takes over the game in a time scramble. h5. King b4, bishop b4 was winning there for black, setting up a mating net, but Magnus goes rook h8, and he's just losing. He's straight up just losing the game. Bishop to b4. He blunders a checkmate net. Just a pure mating net. The last five moves of this game, the nervous system for white completely collapses. Completely collapses. Norderbek Abdulsatorov takes over on the queen side, and defeats Magnus Carlsen with the black pieces in an equal endgame. Oh my goodness. I was watching this. I was like, there ain't no freaking way. Ain't no freaking way. It's one to nothing Norderbek. Norderbek is basically 4-0 in the finals. Ice cold is in the veins, all right? It's in the veins. It's just 4-0. I mean, he drew the game against Arjun, but we're going to get back to that. Oh my goodness. So now Magnus with black, he's got to do something. So he goes for, you know, and Norderbek plays bishop d3. Some sideline of the period's defense. He was expecting this obviously. Magnus e5, and now we play some sort of whatever on earth this is. Some sort of filidor defense structure. a3. Norderbek is full of confidence now. He's like, ah Magnus, it's been a good run, buddy. 19 world championships. Ah, so inspirational. Yeah, but now it's time to take you back, all right, to the nursing home over there in Oslo. But Magnus, you know, he's keeping the position tense. Queen a7. I mean, it just looks like this one's heading for a draw, right? Just not much brewing here. Queen f8, we trade. Look, Norderbek takes here, and this is our position. b5 on the board. We got c, we got b, we got the same four pawns. Yeah, Norderbek is just getting to the finish line. I mean, one more game down the drain. Magnus has absolutely no chance to win this. Knight f3, queen e8. All right, boys, pack it up. Let's make a draw. Let's just agree. Okay, we bring our kings to the middle. Norderbek could have won a pawn here, by the way, but he went here. Now we can win both pawns. Both guys are gonna win both pawns. Magnus, 15 seconds on the clock. It's, I mean, like, if anybody's playing a lose here, it's the Norwegian guy. King e2, knight back to g4, knight back to f6. Total equal position, but we just playing. We just playing. We love chess. We're just... What? Norderbek did not want to make his king passive. He probably thought, if I go back and I lose this pawn, and then he's gonna hunt me with his pawn, why would my king be? I would rather my king is here. He's gonna go here. I'm gonna win his pawn, and then I'm gonna come back and stop the pawn. Except, that just doesn't work at all. The king just goes to the wrong square in a moment of madness. Magnus at this point looks at the audience like, oh? And knight h4 check. Now, Norderbek obviously thought this was still a draw, because he's just gonna win the pawns, and he's gonna sack the knight for this pawn. Except, this is a win for black. How is it a win? Of course, the only way that Magnus can find it. b1, takes, takes, king f5, h4. It's a win, right? No. It's a draw. Anywhere you move the knight, I just... No. Say hello to my little friend. Knight to g5. The untouchable knight. It blocks the pawn, and if you take it, you're out of the square, and the pawn promotes, and it promotes faster than this pawn promotes. Takes h3, king here, h2. It's just queening on the next move. This pawn's halfway up the board. How the f... Well, how did Magnus Carlsen just win the most symmetrical endgame? He won this position. He won... How? It's one-to-one. It is now one-to-one. They drew the third game. Not too much happened, which means it's now winner-take-all. It's winner-take-all, or they have to play a tiebreak. It all comes down to this. Noderbeck, e4, a Spanish, a6, bishop a4, knight f6, b5, all normal, been played before. Kind of an anti-martial approach. White takes the entire d5. Actually, I think Magnus has had this position with white in World Championship matches before. With black. With black, not with white. b4, he's gonna play if white ever plays the move c3. White going over here, looking to land the knight on the f5 square to create potential winning chances. There's d5, typical central break, and b4. Magnus plays like this a lot, because he's a martial player. He delays the movement of his d-pawn for quite some time. Rd1, Qc8, Noderbeck playing on the queen side. I mean, the nerves must be high, but white's still playing super fast and super well, dare I say. Rook trade. And here, suddenly, things get really unpleasant for black. Rb8, queen goes here, Qa8, he takes the pawn, but the knight goes to f5. Magnus spends half of his remaining time, hesitates, plays Nd7, knocks over his queen. Nd7 hits the queen, it falls over, he picks the queen up, he presses the clock. White has immense pressure, and black has 20 seconds on the clock. Rd8, Magnus finds the only defensive move, Qc6. The white queen needs to hang out here. It has to stay here. Black will go here, white needs to commit to the attack. Noderbeck says, with no queens on the board, I'm chilling, because I'm probably just gonna win my pawn back, and the position's gonna be equal. Rd6, Rc6, Nf6, Nd2. Now this is our position, this is what we have to work with. 20 seconds on the clock, may the games begin. Rc6, h5, Magnus solid, 12 seconds to 18 seconds, Noderbeck goes immediately after the knight, but that's not a good move, because the knight goes to the middle. And now white needs to play f6, because if you don't play f6, he plays f6. Noderbeck hovers over his bishop, suddenly realizing, knight e7 is coming, and you cannot stop it. What's funny is, you could have stopped it, but you had to do it with Be3 and Re6, it had to be a very specific coordination of pieces, or maybe a knight d6 in there, to go after knight e7, and suddenly Magnus is a pawn up. Pawn up. The thing that we have seen all day, an endgame scramble against the best endgame player of all time. He's gonna threaten you with a knight trade, he's gonna threaten you with a king trade. Been a long recap. With a rook trade, or a bishop trade. He's gonna walk in with his king, the king walks up the entire length of the board. Rook a2, should you trade the bishops? Probably not, he doesn't trade the bishops. Should you trade the rooks? Probably not, but I think it's actually a draw, but he trades the rooks, and he actually pressed the clock while knocking over Magnus' pieces. It's a draw here, but you gotta be really, really accurate. Gotta be really accurate, because he's gonna put all his pawns on the light squares. And he blunders. And there is a ghost move here that wins the game for black. What you had to play here with white was bishop g7. You had to maintain pressure on this bishop, so this bishop can never move. And if e3, you're always taking and putting the king on g2. That's the drawing setup. This pawn gets traded, this king goes here. Bishop c1, and Magnus, in two seconds, finds the only winning resource. e3, the crushing pawn move! Two days of chess, 30 rounds of chess, pawn to e3. You cannot take it with the pawn, because you lose this, and this. You cannot take it with the bishop, because you lose this anyway. And ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you, the 20-time champion of the world, Magnus freaking Carlsen. Wins the rapid, wins the blitz. I have absolutely nothing else to say. The fact that I was staring at the TV like, there's just no way. This is the dream scenario for me. Why? Because I talked about this all the time. I want Magnus to win the tournaments, but I don't want it to be easy. I want to sit there with five rounds to go going, there's no freaking way, right? How's this going to happen? I want it to be like two sets down Djokovic, and he's losing the third set. I want it to be like Nadal Medvedev, Australian Open, the last Grand Slam that Nadal managed to win. How did he win this championship? He was down in the final. He won a position that absolutely nobody could have won. He was not even in the qualifying for the top four. He had to beat a guy in front of him. He had two or three results that had to happen for him. Just 20-time champion of the world, man. I think 10 championships in blitz at this point, maybe nine. Yeah, haters, y'all going to have to take a year off, man. Y'all are cooked, man. Y'all are cooked. Y'all are going to have to find new things to complain about, like pushing the camera out of the way, even though the cameraman himself was fine with it, but you're not because you're offended at everything, like a table slam. The table slam thing, I saw there was complaints about it by Levon Aronian, who's actually beloved, absolutely beloved. If it actually is something that a lot of the players dislike, then what can I say? As a fan, I love it. Slam as many tables as you want. I think it's great. Oh, chess is such a regal game. Nobody can demonstrate emotion. God forbid we slam tables. We do a whole lot worse in the chess community. Don't have to get into that in this video. By the way, on the women's side, 46 minutes into this recap. These recaps are impossible. On the women's side, the final four was composed of Anna Muzyczuk, Elina Robers, Juji Nair, and Bibisara Osobayeva. Bibisara is a two-time World Blitz champion. Elina is new on the scene. I mean, new on the scene is, in the last two years, she's been improving a lot, chasing the Grandmaster title. Juji Nair had the best year of any woman in the world, other than maybe defending her World Championship, but she's now like the highest rated woman in the world. Anna Muzyczuk is the same way that, you know, Fabi and Magnus are old guard when it comes to playing Nojebek and playing against our generic IC. She's the old guard, man. She's winning everything all the time. Multiple-time World Champ as well. So, the tiebreak game, not the tiebreak game, the clinching game against Elina. Elina employs the Alekhine, Alekhine's defense, and it doesn't go particularly well. Anna Muzyczuk plays very solidly in the opening, very positional, and in this opening with black, if you play passively, you will get obliterated. You have to go for d5 and knight c4. It's the only way to try to fight back against the lack of space. When you hesitate, Anna Muzyczuk's like, wait a minute, I've been here before. d5, b3. Black ain't never making another useful move again. Black is going to try to play this game with a just a really concerning lack of oxygen. Queen d3, knight e4. This is like a free roll. Knight a8. You know something has gone terribly wrong. Bishop d4. Every part of the board that white is moving on, he's crushing. Knight g5. Picks up the rooks. Picks up three pawns for her troubles. f4, f5 is coming. An absolutely thunderous approach. Rook e1 and so on. Oh my goodness. Even the end game is winning because you have three extra pawns. Shocker, right? Rook e3. Four pawns down. Oh my goodness. Anna Muzyczuk is playing this game like Elina stole money from her. She's playing this game like she is mad. Rook d7. King f6, trying to defend the position, but it's not good enough. The knights, they're good, but they're not good like this. She's going to win all her pawns, man. She straight up took every pawn Elina started the game with and she stayed with five. When has a pawn count ever been five nothing? The knight survived, but not for very long. Rook c7. Nice move. He can't even take it because the knight can't stop the queen. And this is how Anna Muzyczuk became a finalist of the World Blitz Championship. Meanwhile, we saw Zsuzsanna lose a playoff in the World Rapid Championship. She got the silver medal there. She played great. She made both finals, Rapid and Blitz, but she lost the Blitz playoff to Goryachkina. So how would she do in the Blitz Blitz playoff against Bibisara? It's best of four. So how is she going to do? Bibisara, very experienced, strong online as well. She's like 2,900, 3,000 online, which unlike a lot of the guys, I don't know how many of the women actively play in a lot of these online events like the title Tuesdays and whatever, because, you know, the dudes, that's what they do. They just like all the time. And so I just don't know, like, who are the highest rated women on Chess.com. Sara must be top five. 2,900, 3,000 playing a lot, a lot, a lot. Maybe Alice Lee from the US, maybe Carissa. Yeah, Bibisara just in this very first game takes this pretty straightforward position and just outplays her opponent with a beautiful tactic, Knight takes c3 with back rank problems. Jujuner was not herself in these playoffs, both against Goryachkina and against Bibisara. She gets pinned here. And because the bishop's not moved yet, the White Rooks are not connected. So Queen e5, Bibisara spots it immediately and converts this game like she's Magnus Carlsen against literally anybody. Just up a pawn, and it's just like not a competition. She just bides her time, wins another pawn, wins another pawn. And the White King's super passive. Here comes the Black King to collect. King g5, the e-pawn's going to move. And this game is over. Not only was this game over, the match was over. Bibisara swept Jujuner, which means that in the playoff portions of these tournaments, Ju has half out of five. She lost one and a half half to Goryachkina. And in this matchup against Bibisara, she lost every game. She went half out of five in her playoffs this year. So that's pretty mind-blowing because she had a really good year in classical. I think she's the highest rated woman in the world in classical chess. Technically, it's Hoifan, but Hoifan doesn't play that much. So let's say minimum like 50 games a year. In the active list, I think it's Jujuner. She's like 2570, 2580, 25 maybe 60. She's higher rated than Ju in June, but half out of five in the playoffs. Pretty, pretty mind-blowing, which set up a final that unlike Magnus Nojibek, which went back and forth, swashbuckling, came down to one game. It came down to one game. Bibisara, Anamustjuk, fourth game playoff, 51-minute recap. Definitely a record on this channel. It's going to be a little longer. We start off nice little chill, four knights, English, d5, takes, takes. Black goes e5, and now white's plans include preparing d4, repositioning the knight to this, this, rook b1, a4, a5, finding something to do with this bishop. Queen goes here, or here, or here. h4 sometimes played with knight g5 ideas. Very, very flexible position. So there's rook b1. There's the knight repositioning itself to the middle. There's the queen going to a4. Knight e3. White also has ideas like knight d5, sometimes f4. This position, I'm not going to lie, sucks for black. I hate these positions for black. I love these positions for white, because you dictate the game. You dictate the game. You know, like, I hate playing this position with black, because you are at, completely at white's mercy. And as you can see here, white is just improving the position on all fronts. Knight back to e3, h5, you know, knight goes back, and then you're gonna, and there's h6. What do you do with black? What do you do here? She pushes. Should have taken, but taking is really, really tough in blitz, weakening your structure like that. All right, we're repeating a little bit. She's biding her time. Knight d4. Definitely a very tense final game. Feels like nobody wants to commit to anything. Positions certainly equal, but now the board opens up. Here, f5 was the better move, locking in the rook with the bishop, and keeping the bishop out there. But by losing this pawn, she allows Bibisara to get a little bit too much activity, and this is the trade that white needs. The light squared bishops off the board, the knight absolutely dominant on the outpost. It's just a matter of time until Bibisara gets in with rook e7, rook e8. Black is defenseless. Black's dark squared bishop is not participating at all, at all. Now, this is a mistake and a time trouble. Queen c6, king h7, Bibisara works the magic. Queen back to a4, and before you know it, the black queen is trapped. The black queen is just trapped. For the last 10 moves, absolutely nothing happened in black's position. Nothing. Like, look at the pieces. For the last 10 moves, nothing happened in the black position. Only white made improvements. Rook f3, and she blanked. She played queen g5, rook d7. Bibisara is your world blitz champion. Three time world women's champion of blitz. Three time! And she's like 20 years old. I mean, that's astounding. Maybe 21. I don't know. All these people are, like, between 17 and 23. Like, I have no idea. Like, the no-deer bags, the java heres, the chimers, you know, the edus gorels, their domushes, like, all the prodigies of the world. They're, like, in a mix of, like, six years or something like that. Bibisara is the champ. Anna Muzachuk, the runner-up. What more to say? I mean, I will just quickly go through. By the way, Bibisara also made it to the candidates by winning this tournament, so she makes it to the candidates, which is huge. She will play in Cyprus. The final results of the Swiss, of the women's Swiss are here. It was a huge tie of 11 points. Gunjana misses out on tie breaks. It's crazy. She literally missed out on tie breaks. Four people made it. I mean, just heartbreaking. And yeah, in the open, it was Arjun just completely bludgeoning the field. Oh, Fabi got 14. I apologize. He did not get 13 and a half. He got 14. He won the last round, but it doesn't matter. And then it was a massive tie for the last spot. Yeah, some crazy storylines from this tournament. Like, the legend of Gautam from India, Gautam Krishna, last day of the event, he went half out of six. That's freaking tough. Hans, I think, withdrew. He was definitely disappointed by his performance. Yeah, I mean, but the typical guys, you know, you got Lazovic up there. You got Dubov up there. Lusheng Lei, very strong from China. You got your Nihals. Nihal tied for the playoff spot, but he didn't make it. Wesley, you know, I mean, there was so much more I could cover. This is the longest recap I made in a minute. An hour long I've been recording. Hey, which of your other favorite chess content creators can hit record, talk about chess for 55 minutes in a row while sick, by the way, and keep it interesting? Let me know in the comments if you watched all 55 minutes. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. What an incredible tournament. Magnus Carlsen wins his 19th and 20th World Championships against all odds. Screw the haters. The chess world keeps on churning. More slow-run content coming. More over-the-board tournaments coming for me in the first quarter of 2026. Happy New Year to you and your loved ones, wishing you health, happiness, success. May 2026 be better than 2025. We say that every year. Somehow it doesn't happen. And while the world is in turmoil, may we rejoice at this beautiful board game that we have, and that we love, and that we really hate as well, I have to say, especially when we lose. But that's how it goes. That's all I have for you today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for being a part of this amazing community. Gotham out. Get out of here.