The Final Match! Magnus Carlsen vs Bibisara Assaubayeva | FIDE Chess World Championship 2026

Once again, of course, Magnus is a huge favorite in that matchup. He's playing the lowest rated player in the tournament right now, and we've got a position that's already fire on the board at the center. You know, we've only had pawn moves so far by both these players and there's big tension right now. Magnus going all out early on. It resembles the kind of the opening stages, the middle game stages of the Hans Niemann against Hikaru Nakamura battle from earlier where there's two pawns with a standoff against this one pawn. Neither side wants to blink. Bibisara clearly doesn't want to take in the center, giving Magnus two strong pawns there. While Magnus doesn't necessarily want to capture and break his structure either. He first brings the knight out, adding pressure to her center, and then we'll see Magnus try to get pieces out the way to castle. I would pick white here, probably, just because it looks like Magnus is better developed, but still early days. Yeah, so let's go back to the demands of the moment though, right? The idea that Magnus Carlsen needs to get a full victory here. Do you feel like the position lends itself? Obviously, he is a player is favored and you would expect in the player-to-player matchup that yes, he could get it done. But he also has to have, you know, the landscape with which to make it happen. Yeah, I think he should be happy. Immediately, he's got an asymmetrical position. That means black hasn't been able to just lock down the pawn structure and make it about maneuvering. Bibisara there just moving her queen out the way. She'll move her knight next and maybe try to castle. But yeah, it's of course hard to tell, but I think Magnus, just the fact that he was given this position with some kind of normal patterns to fall back on and the fact that he's got the center first should be relatively content. But the question will be how long that's got to go on for, right? Because if you're playing black in this position, and especially Bibisara's last move, what it hints at is the knight comes out of the way on the next move. You go short castle and then perhaps aim for maximum tension by pushing your own e-pawn two steps forward and those four pawns facing each other. Magnus, does he have enough time to sort of not only complete his development, but play for that central advantage early on? He's the one who goes into a bit of a tink right now after Bibisara's last move. I have a feeling Magnus wants to castle on the longer side, moving the light-spurred bishop out of the way, moving the other bishop out of the way and getting the white king castled. Brings the white rooks to the center as well. It just feels like maybe that's the direction to go, especially in the must-win situation. But we will see he moves one bishop first. He hears you. I think he's going for your plan. You want to try to create as many imbalances as possible. I'm curious why he chose that square. I guess maybe he didn't want to allow a pin on this diagonal from the black dark-spurred bishop. But yeah, it looks like a bit of a timid move, but the idea is much more aggressive. There was a time in the day when Magnus' heart rate was at 40 in an absolutely chaotic position. And here we're just getting started, but you know what? That just tells you about the tournament situation. He's around the 90 mark already. He's not heartless though. Honestly though, if I was his doctor, this would make me feel better. The 40 from earlier was actually concerning to a degree. So now he is looking a little bit more human. At least played some human chess today, I have to say. Usually Magnus Carlsen doesn't make the mistakes that we've seen him. So it feels like the heart rate is catching up with chess that we've seen from him. I mean, especially that turnaround in Wesley's game. I'm still thinking about just how uncharacteristic that is and it just sort of changed everything. Just shook up the entire standings, the tables, and Magnus' form put under question. And I think, you know, again, if he doesn't manage to make it up into that top four, there's going to be some pretty, you know, interesting reflection on, let's say, his performance in group stages of previous events where he's not always coming out of the group stages in first, but maybe the format of those previous group stages were better suited for just getting him into the playoff picture, where he really then starts to just turn it on and run the table against everybody else. I do, to even put himself in the position that he so desires, at least a top four and scraping in to that upper bracket quarterfinal. Wow. Fair play to Bibisaro. She's handled this opening phase really well. I did fear for her, just the fact that Magnus seemed to be ahead in development, but now it's become much slower. Magnus now offering a trade of queens against Magnus. You know how that ends up. The problem is there's no real alternative. She had to trade. If the black queen had gone back, she would have been walking into some tricks on the e-file. That would have been Knight takes pawn tactics. So now we see white with the bishop pair, although not the most impressive bishop pair in the world right now, and black trying to clamp down everything on light squares for Bibisaro. Magnus, he wants to teleport this white knight into a beautiful outpost a bit later, but it will take a while. That's going to take a while, and for Bibisaro, I completely agree. I think she's played this position, this opening, all handled her troubles out of the opening pretty well. You know, there's a nice post for her own knight that she can relocate it to via the edge of the board, and she's doing just that, eyeing that c4 square next, jumping in with the knight. Magnus, it looks like he's looked far into the future as he blitzes out his move. He does exactly the same. And now is it time to jump in with the knight, attacking that bishop, and maybe even setting up the a-pawn, moving one step forward and asking some questions on the left flank. It just looks like her position is fine, but I've seen Magnus win this pawn structure so many times with both colors. Given one more move, he'll save his bishop. The big question is whether you take that bishop before it runs away. And for Bibisaro, the problem is her dark squares. The white knight is coming very quickly to an outpost that can never ever be challenged. And Magnus, he's very flexible with his pawns on the other side. This is just Magnus going back to basics, and this is what Magnus has been doing since he was a kid, this type of slow positional grind. And I love how instructive it is that he's happy to give up the bishop pair as well. Once again, if we take off the two bishops and two knights, white is left with this really good knight against black's really horrible bishop on d7 stuck behind his own pawn. So those trades will only favor Magnus. Again, the problem child for black is that bishop. Bibisaro does not go for the trade. She improves the position of the rook. Now, no more offer of that bishop on the board. It's perhaps time for Bibisaro to improve the position of her other knights. Start looking at ways at greener pastures, a better square for the knight that's stuck on the right side of the board. How do you do that though? You have to drop it back first. Okay. There we have it. She will begin the reroute. This is just... I don't want to be too biased, but I've seen Magnus do this countless times. Far too many times. I wouldn't say it's biased to say the player who's been at the top of the world for more than decades time is expected to come away with a victory. But I wonder if Bibisaro's placement of the knight was simply to defend that tender spot that you were earlier highlighting. So that you can reroute the bishop now and improve the position of the light-squared bishop via the other diagonal. Yeah, I think that is her plan. It's what she needs to do before the white knight does take a few steps into the black position and go for this backward pawn. White's intentions are clear. There's a backward one here. The problem for black is you can never really step it forward. You lose pawns in the process. And yeah, it's just one of those positions that's very, yeah, very stable. It's just hard to find a plan. You don't have any pawn breaks, no real activity. Black really misses her dark-squared bishop in a position like this. A dark-squared bishop would plug all the holes and even have some attacking ideas. But yeah, this type of slow position. Bibisaro is a very active player. She's a very dynamic player when given the opportunity. That's why she won the World Blitz title a couple of times. But this doesn't feel like that type of position. And what adds to the sadness if you're playing black here is that you know who you're up against, you know, one of the greatest endgame players of all times. I mean, Bibisaro's fully aware of the Magnus touch in these endgames. She knows she's got such an uphill task ahead of her. And even though it's balanced, it's almost not too far from reality to say that it would be a miracle to save such a position against Magnus where he just keeps on maneuvering his pieces endlessly. There are no big trades. The rooks will stay on the board for a long period of time. The miners will be on the board and Magnus will find a way to break through. And a pawn push. Now a big positional threat of pushing forward even further, trying to break through on the dark squares, trying to undouble the white pawns. So I don't think she should hesitate. She should clamp down on that side and it's still going to be very difficult for Magnus to make progress. It's only a tiny advantage for white objectively, but it's just whether she can handle the tension long term. It does feel like black's rooks are so much worse though, to me. No targets. Yeah, no targets in the position. Magnus is the one who's got all the targets to be looking. Very quick action replay. I'll just say, I mean, this is going to go on for a while, James. Maybe we go to Fabi versus Hans because we're going to see handshakes very soon in that one. You know, for Fabi to get to four points will be absolutely critical, David, if it's possible at all because the position is wild there and Fabi's the only one having fun. Here's the round robin in big, big style. Magnus has got to be feeling the relief now. His fate in his hands. If he has to play for that tiebreaker, he needs to get the job done on his board. But what's going on there? Magnus, he's got an exchange. He's an exchange up. Yeah, just as we were jumping earlier, he found a cool tactic. Bibisara put her rooks on the wrong squares and maybe just very quickly on the small board. We'll show what happened. She put her rook on a vulnerable square a few moves ago. Look how these rooks are both on light squares. Pawn to a4, hits a pawn, wins a pawn since after a capture, the bishop zooms up and it's another skewer. Two black rooks find themselves caught embarrassed and that's how Magnus won a rook for bishop. And if we fast forward to the live position, still some chances of a fortress just because it's hard to break through with any of the white pawns, but ultimately the black knight so stuck, the black bishop stuck. It just feels like a matter of time. But you've got to be feeling for Lev right now, right? He has this performance in the round robin. He first in Weissenhaus has a terrible start, is looking to reestablish, you know, himself in the Grand Slam tour, has this brilliant six round thing and then goes down to Vincent Keimer, a completely out of form player and he's looking at fighting Magnus for that fourth spot. That's a situation no player wants to be in. Absolutely not. Going down to Vincent Keimer, that one's definitely going to hurt. But really, I think the game that'll eat at him is that Javakir Sindorov game where kind of blundered it away. He could have never been in this position if he had played just an ounce better earlier on in the day. But such is the unforgiving nature of freestyle chess. Magnus could have pointed to the game against Wesley. So blundering checkmate from a position he was just winning two moves prior. In the meantime, Bibisara, she's doing the right thing. She's just sitting still. You don't want to touch too much when you're trying to build a fortress, especially when you have a minor piece against a rook. You don't want too many open lines. But whether it holds is a big question. It just feels like sooner or later black will be forced to trade off or commit something and then white pawns will move, white rook will have targets. It just feels like Magnus is formulating that final stage plan now. I can also reveal the results of another game from the opposing group. Arjun Aragicy also managed to come away with the victory over Ray Robson. He was the other player sitting at three coming in moving up to four. He qualifies through just like Fabiano Caruana does as well. So actually the top four is set over in that group with Hikaru, Hans Niemann, Fabiano and Arjun. They will be the four that qualify through to the upper bracket. Fantastic group. We've got that going on and then we've got one player who will make it through in this one as three have already gone in. So this is where the fight's at right now. Bibisara trying to hold an extremely difficult endgame. David, if you're black here and you want to set up a fortress, what kind of plans are you looking at? Do they exist? That's the problem. I don't know if they do exist. At some point Magnus will be forcing Bibisara to trade a set of pawns. I would expect the white rook to come back and okay, he first trades off trying to force things immediately. And oh tactics from Magnus. He captures a pawn, double exclamation mark given by the computer here. If the knight takes, the pieces get skewered yet again. The white rook slides across and the bishop and knight have been lined up together. That's exactly what we see play out on the board. One of the pieces can give itself up though. Will take a pawn in the process and it will be three pawns versus two pawns. But the fact that the black pawn in the middle is isolated distance from its fellow pawns mean that a fortress very unlikely. If you could kind of pick up that pawn and put it nearer the black king then maybe things hold together. But Magnus here in full control. And if Magnus goes on to play the tiebreak against Lev, let's remind everyone that in their matchup, in their head-to-head in the round robin, I mean Magnus completely dominated that game. I mean, I know we're in the city of magic and magicians, but I wasn't necessarily certain that Magnus was going to pull the rabbit out of the hat this time around based on how things looked going into these final couple rounds. By the grace of God, I guess a couple things broke his way. And then when his destiny was placed back in his own hands here to get the victory, he looks just on the verge of doing so. And it's old man chess, Magnus would say, with the way he's done it, the slow, stodgy endgame eventually finally breaking through. But Bibisara, the question, the reason she paused was because she had to decide which piece to give up, the bishop or knight. She chose to keep the knight. Tanya, maybe the best practical chance. And now if you're white, yes, it's the best practical chance and you feel like you have everything defended, but the white king just joins the party, right? It's about to land on that e5 central square with ideas of even sacrificing your rook for that knight and going into a winning king pawn endgame. The knight's going to be overloaded. You're going to attack that piece, force it to get out and then win the central pawn as well. So Bibisara forced to get her own king out right now. What is the winning plan? I would still think you want to get your king forward and start pushing your pawns. Yeah, the problem for black here for Bibisara is that her knight is just frozen for the rest of the game. If the knight is ever kicked away, you simply lose your central pawn. And once that pawn drops, it's pretty much the end of your resistance. You're right. For Magnus, it's not a hundred percent clear what comes next. Probably you push one pawn forward. Ideally, you want to get your king in and push both pawns forward. But the further you push them, the more likely trades become. A rook against the knight with no pawns is a draw. So Magnus needs to keep at least one of his pawns alive later on. Well, it's really interesting. Magnus is, you know, in this group where actually we've got three qualifiers already and they're all from the younger generation, right? You've got Prague, you've got Javakir, you've got Nadebek. So it feels like the exuberance of youth is prevailing in group A. A very different storyline from group B. So Magnus or Lev, one of them who makes it through will be keeping the old guard alive in this group. That is very true. However, there are kind of those persistent three figures of the old guard, right? Who look like they are on their way in. Obviously, Hikaru and Fabiano too, to already make it through. Magnus, just ever so close, still has a little work to be done. But those three continue to hold strong against the younger generation. And the pattern of the previous Grand Slams, the young guys do so well in the round, Robin. They always seem to be there, thereabouts. But come the knockouts, experience tends to start playing more of a factor. And Bibisara, unfortunately, this is what we call Zugzwang. And the Black King will, ooh, I was going to say need to retreat and the White King will step forward. But instead, she gives up a pawn in an attempt to simplify the equation here. Will Magnus take this pawn, separating his own pawns or will he step forward? I expect him to take that one. But nice try. She's trying to get her own king active. You want to try to get as many pawns off the board as possible. So Bibisara aiming for that. And this is what we were talking about earlier on in the game, right? When the position was balanced, Magnus playing the maneuvering game. Just how incredibly hard these endgames can be to hold against the world number one. While saying that, I also realized that in our top eight of the quarterfinals, we've already got the world number two, three, four, and six. World number one still not in the mix. Bibisara, her pawn was not captured. There was a threat of stepping forward with the White G-pawn, hitting, undermining the Black Knight, which was pinned. So she had to step back. Now, I'm wondering whether Magnus goes the long way around, uses his rook to try and catch this intruder before it starts running even further. Maybe it's just time to bring the White King forward, the White Pawn forward. The Black Knight has been destabilized and that means the fortress has been broken. Looking very good now. This is the final stages for Magnus. Tie breaks. Tie breaks just around the corner. Hikaru did manage to find a victory over Vidic as well. As we're watching this one come to a conclusion, that means he solidifies first place in his group. That is important. Gives him the option of his pick from the three, four positions here in this group, which could very well be a Magnus Carlsen. So, if you're picking the opposite group and Magnus is the third or fourth, you want to be able to choose as opposed to being the second slot and being relegated to having Magnus Carlsen as your opponent. Who's in second slot? Is it Hans Niemann? Yes. So, oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves because we'll be able to talk a bit more about that at the end of the day, but I think you might be right. We are, of course, relying on Magnus closing this one out and he will do just that. So, he now moves up to four points, tying Levon Oronian four points apiece and a tiebreaker to come deciding that fourth position in this group. Oh my goodness. It was the quarterfinals match between those two players in the World Blitz Championship. Will it be the same storyline here? But right now the job isn't over for Magnus. He's just got one foot in, you know, he's confirmed that tiebreaker with Lev, but he needs to take Lev down. The time format's about to change. It's going to be a shift and there we see the players analyzing, but the chess is not done in group A. And well played to Bibisara who put up a real fight there, nearly set up that fortress against Magnus, but was ground down. Nice to see them discussing the game afterwards as well. Really classy touch from both.