★★★ INTRO ★★★

The 2018 World Chess Championship was a match between 27 year old defending champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway and 26 year old challenger, Fabiano Caruana of the USA.

★★★ QUALIFICATION ★★★

Carlsen successfully defended his title vs. Karjakin in 2016 (see Game Collection: 2016 World Chess Championship for games and more info), and thus, was the defending champion once again in this match.

The 8 players in the Candidates tournaments qualified via. the following methods:

- The loser of the 2016 match: Sergey Karjakin

- 2 finalists from the 2017 World Cup: Levon Aronian and Ding Liren (see World Cup (2017)/Levon Aronian and World Cup (2017)/Ding Liren for their games, respectively)

- Top 2 FIDE Grand Prix tournament qualifiers: Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Alexander Grischuk

- Top 2 players by rating: Fabiano Caruana and Wesley So

- One wild card: Vladimir Kramnik

Caruana won it. (see World Championship Candidates (2018) for games)

★★★ CONDITIONS ★★★

The match was played in London, England. It was a best of 12, meaning the first to 6 1/2 points would be the winner. If it's tied after 12 games, there will be tiebreaker games at faster time controls. Game 1 was played on November 9, 2018.

Note: For the rapid time controls, the total score of the match is listed, with the score of the rapids in brackets.

★★★ NOTABLE GAMES ★★★

Game 1: Caruana vs Carlsen, 2018

Game 6: Carlsen vs Caruana, 2018

Game 10: Caruana vs Carlsen, 2018

Game 11: Carlsen vs Caruana, 2018

Game 12: Caruana vs Carlsen, 2018

★★★ FINAL ★★★

Game 12 was played on November 26, 2018. Entering the game, both players were tied at 5 1/2-5 1/2. The winner of this game would be declared world champion. Neither player won it, so faster time controls were played on November 28, 2018. It started with a 4 game rapid match. Carlsen won the first 2 rapid games, and needed just a draw in either of the last 2 games (first with white) to defend his title. Just like last time (in 2016), he needed just a draw with white in the rapid portion, and he got a victory, to secure his title, 9-7 (3-0 in rapid tiebreaks).

Carlsen became just the third player to win 4 straight World Championships, after Steinitz, Lasker, Karpov, Kasparov (4 if only including undisputed titles, 6 if you add his 2 PCA titles) and Anand. However, only he, Kasparov and Anand did it within a 5 year span.

This was also the 3rd straight successful title defence for Carlsen. The only other players who defended their title 3 straight times, within a span of 4 years are Steinitz (in 3 years), Lasker (4 defences in 4 years), Kasparov and Anand.

★★★ MINI TABLE ★★★

Carlsen 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 | 1 1 1 (3 wins, 0 losses, and 12 draws) <60.0% score>

Caruana 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 | 0 0 0 (0 wins, 3 losses, and 12 draws) <40.0% score>

★★★ OTHER LINKS ★★★

See also: Carlsen - Caruana World Championship Match (2018)

Head to Head Record Prior to 2018: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/ches... (21 wins, 11 losses and 19 draws in favour of Carlsen)

Previous World Championship: Game Collection: 2016 World Chess Championship

Next World Championship: Game Collection: 2021 World Chess Championship