Carl Ja­cobs

As des­tiny would have it, 22-year-old Mag­nus Carlsen will chal­lenge 44-year-old Viswanathan Anand for the world chess cham­pi­onship next No­vem­ber.

The clash be­tween the Nor­we­gian prodi­gy and the In­di­an gi­ant has all the in­gre­di­ents of an epic con­fronta­tion and may quite like­ly be the most fas­ci­nat­ing con­test for the supreme ti­tle in the his­to­ry of the game. Some may see it sim­ply as an­oth­er en­counter be­tween youth and ex­pe­ri­ence but, in this case, the hunger and dom­i­nance of the youth­ful chal­lenger and the for­mi­da­ble dura­bil­i­ty of the cham­pi­on give their fate­ful du­el an ir­re­sistible kind of ro­mance.

There can be no doubt about Carlsen's cre­den­tials for en­ter­ing this em­i­nent are­na. In fact, he made him­self the log­i­cal con­tender some four years ago when he be­came the youngest chess play­er in his­to­ry to be ranked num­ber one, sur­pass­ing the record held by Vladimir Kram­nik. At 19, in fact, he shocked the chess world when, hav­ing stormed his way in­to the FIDE Can­di­dates round, he abrupt­ly de­clined to play be­cause of dis­agree­ments with changes in the cham­pi­onship cy­cle made by the world chess body.

Last Jan­u­ary, fol­low­ing a se­ries of spec­tac­u­lar vic­to­ries, the youth­ful Nor­we­gian GM at­tained an ELO rat­ing 2861, sur­pass­ing Kas­parov's record 2851 set in Ju­ly 1999. Since he gained the GM ti­tle at the age of 13, in fact, Carlsen seemed des­tined for great­ness. And now he faces the test that may se­cure for him a spe­cial place in chess his­to­ry, win­ning the world cham­pi­onship at 22 and equalling the record set by Gar­ry Kas­parov re­gard­ed by many as the great­est play­er ever.

Carlsen won the right to face Anand by win­ning, al­though by a hair's breadth, a Chal­lengers tour­na­ment con­sid­ered by ex­perts as "the strongest ever" hav­ing the high­est av­er­age ELO rat­ing of all time, 2786.

In­stead of tak­ing the lead ear­ly and keep­ing it with ease through­out, Carlsen, strange­ly enough, found him­self floun­der­ing to­wards the end and man­ag­ing to win via the tie break and a large slice of luck. So that while he pulled it off, the young ge­nius al­so demon­strat­ed that he has an Achilles Heel, a fact that the cham­pi­on will cer­tain­ly seek op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­ploit.

In a fin­ish that com­men­ta­tors de­scribed as "bizarre", Carlsen un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly lost in time pres­sure to Vass­i­ly Ivanchuk in the 12th round sur­ren­der­ing the lead by half a point to Kram­nik who pre­vailed over Lev Aron­ian.

In the 13th, Carlsen drew lev­el with a gru­elling win against a dis­heart­ened cel­lar-placed Teimour Rad­jabov while Kram­nik had to set­tle for a draw from a won po­si­tion against Boris Gelfand. The two lead­ers then en­tered the fi­nal round on eight-and-a-half points each. And then the un­think­able hap­pened, they both lost their games in time trou­ble! Carlsen went un­der to Pe­ter Svi­dler while Kram­nik was beat­en by Ivanchuk.

So, in­stead of the kind of con­vinc­ing win that marks his ca­reer, the Nor­we­gian star pro­ceeds on his date with des­tiny on the ba­sis of a tie-break vic­to­ry cal­cu­lat­ed on his five tour­na­ment wins ver­sus Kram­nik's four.

If the game of crick­et has be­come fa­mous for its "glo­ri­ous un­cer­tain­ties," then what can we say about chess? Per­haps that the "un­cer­tain­ties" are not so glo­ri­ous?

Carlsen was ob­vi­ous­ly pleased to qual­i­fy and, when asked about his per­for­mance, said there was prob­a­bly "a per­fect storm of phys­i­cal and men­tal tired­ness" at the end of the tour­na­ment which ex­plained his dis­ap­point­ing fin­ish.

In his turn, Kram­nik said he was "some­what un­lucky" in this event and felt that he had played at least as well as Carlsen. On this score, the for­mer world cham­pi­on thought "it might have been nice to have a rapid/blitz play­off to re­al­ly set­tle the is­sue."

The chess world then looks for­ward anx­ious­ly to the epic clash be­tween youth and ex­pe­ri­ence. True, Anand has not had the kind of year that be­fits the world cham­pi­on; he suf­fered a shock de­feat by young Fabi­ano Caru­a­na at the re­cent Zurich Chess Chal­lenge. But the In­di­an hero has demon­strat­ed an enor­mous re­silience in de­fend­ing his ti­tle five times over the last sev­en years, his great­est as­set in this re­gard be­ing the depth and com­pre­hen­sive­ness of his prepa­ra­tion.

And he would cer­tain­ly be heart­ened by the com­ments of Kram­nik from whom he took the world ti­tle in 2008 with a de­ci­sive score of 6.5 to 4.5.

?