The Win No Human Was Going to Find

Magnus Carlsen vs Fabiano Caruana, World Championship, London, game 6 2018 · Petroff Defence · 1/2-1/2

Fabiano Caruana

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Magnus Carlsen

Step through the game; it stops where a move is worth finding.

Before move one

Coach

Everybody watching this game had written it off by move seventeen. The queens came off early, the pawn structure was symmetrical, and two of the strongest players alive were shuffling knights around in a position where nothing appeared to be happening. Shankland woke up, saw this position on the board and expected another quick draw. Svidler and Grischuk said much the same thing on air. Six hours later Caruana had a forced win on the board and neither he nor anyone in the commentary booth could see it, and the reason it is worth replaying is not the win. It is watching how a dead-level position turns into a losing one, one small decision at a time, and then watching a world champion defend the wreckage well enough that the only thing that beat him was a computer.

Engine plan

Watch the black knight. It starts on b8, gets chased home twice, and spends the second half of the game touring squares the white pieces cannot cover. Almost every problem White has to solve comes from it.
Read Carlsen's own account at moves 22 and 29. He names the exact stretch where he thinks he went wrong, and it is earlier and quieter than you would guess from the board.
At move 44 White gives up a piece for three pawns. Before you play on, decide whether you would have done it, then read what all four annotators say about the alternative.
From move 61 the game is one long fortress. Bartholomew's three conditions at move 64 are the frame: Black wins only if the king reaches the corner, or White has to push his last pawn for free, or White's bishop gets tied to a short diagonal.
Move 68 is the famous one. Shankland refuses to give it a question mark and explains why, and that judgement is worth more than the engine's verdict.

Scoresheet

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