For the first time since Bobby Fischer in 1972, a player from the United States will compete for the world chess championship. American player Fabiano Caruana won the 2018 Candidates Tournament, and will challenge current world champion Magnus Carlsen, in a 12-game match in London, this coming November.

The 25-year old Caruana qualified by winning an 8-player Candidates Tournament, held in Berlin, March 10-28, 2018. Each player played each other player twice, for a total of 14 games per player. Caruana won the event with 9.0 points (a win is one point, a draw is half a point). In second place with 8.0 points each were Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan) and Sergey Karjakin (Russia).

Current world champion Magnus Carlsen (left) and challenger Fabiano Caruana (right)

The fourth through eighth place finishers were Ding Liren (China, 7.5), Vladimir Kramnik (Russia, 6.5), Alexander Grischuk (Russia, 6.5), Wesley So (United States, 6.0), and Levon Aronian (Armenia, 4.5).

The eight players qualified to play in the Candidates Tournament in various ways. The tournament had the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 7th highest rated players in the world. Missing was #1 rated Magnus Carlsen of course. Four notable top-10 players who didn’t quite qualify to play in the tournament were Hikaru Nakamura (United States), Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France), Vishy Anand (India), and Anish Giri (Netherlands).

Caruana won 5 games, drew 8 games and lost just 1 game (to Karjakin). Going into the last round, Caruana had a one-half point lead over the field. He played the black pieces against Grischuk, who had nothing to lose. Caruana played the Petrov’s Defense, a relatively safe choice. There was no major turning point in the game but Caruana kept applying pressure and finally won in 69 moves to clinch first place.

A key moment in the tournament occurred in the next-to-last round. Caruana had lost in the previous round and had fallen to second place. He desperately needed a win, playing white against Levon Aronian, the pre-tournament favorite. Caruana had played pawn to f6, checking the black king with the bishop, and Aronian had blocked by moving his knight to g6, reaching the position below:

Caruana then crashed through with Rxh6 check:

Aronian had to resign because if he takes the white rook, then white’s knight jumps to Nf5 with check, followed by Qxg5 grabbing the black rook, followed by checkmate in a couple of moves — easy for a grandmaster to see but not obvious to chess mortals like most of us.

The reigning champion, 27-year old Magnus Carlsen from Norway, will be heavily favored against Caruana. But it should be an exciting match, especially for U.S. players who’ll get a chance to see the first American in 46 years to play for the world championship.

There’s a long, interesting history of the connection between chess and computer science. But those will be topics for a different day.