1 successfully defended his chess title here.
Paris, Magnus Carlsen said he swapped his trademark appetite for complex positions for a more pragmatic, Mourinho-inspired approach at the Esports World Cup, and the strategy paid off as the Norwegian world No.
Carlsen secured back-to-back EWC chess title on Saturday, defeating Belarusian grandmaster Denis Lazavik 2-0 in the best-of-three grand final. He won both sets 3-1 and finished the tournament without losing a single match. “I started watching the Mourinho documentary on Netflix the other day and they were talking about the first season that they were just winning 1-0 every match and I was thinking, well, that sounds pretty nice, doesn’t it? Carlsen said Lazavik defended accurately for much of their first game, but eventually faced a critical decision with only 20 seconds remaining.
Carlsen told reporters. Carlsen, who had been battling illness during the tournament, said he initially felt he was in “survival mode” before gradually recovering. Carlsen said he had consciously decided before the tournament to reduce the amount of risk in his play. “My main thought leading into this tournament was that I was going to be a lot more conservative with my choices, especially considering the match format here,” he said. “Not losing a single game in such a format, you need not only skill, but a little bit of luck, a little bit of randomness as well,” Carlsen said.
