The FIDE World Chess Championship match between the current world champion and Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen and his Russian challenger Sergey Karjakin begins on Friday in Manhattan, New York. Karjakin had bested an elite group of grandmasters in the March 2016 Candidates tournament. They included his countryman Peter Svidler; America’s finest, Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura; India’s Anand; Armenia’s Levon Aronian; the Netherlands’ Anish Giri and Bulgaria’s Veselin Topalov.
A week ago, Carlsen boosted his chances of emerging victorious at the world championship match by defeating renowned blitz player Nakamura, in the final of an online invitational tournament hosted by Chess.com. It was a three-hour blitz match and 25 games were contested.
