Library / Games / Fabiano Caruana vs Magnus Carlsen
Chessable Masters Final · chess24.com INT · 25 June 2020

Fabiano Caruana vs Magnus Carlsen, Chessable Masters Final, R1.12

Fabiano Caruana 0–1 Magnus Carlsen
Fabiano Caruana vs Magnus Carlsen
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Chessable Masters Final, 25 June 2020

The Caruana-Carlsen game from the 2020 Chessable Masters Final (Round 1.12, June 25) was won by Carlsen as Black. The Chessable Masters Final was a two-player day-match between Carlsen and Caruana, contested as part of the Magnus Carlsen Tour 2020.

Carlsen’s win was a Closed Spanish (Ruy Lopez) — Caruana as White chose the slow positional Closed Spanish, Carlsen defended actively with the Anti-Marshall, the middlegame produced complications and Carlsen converted in roughly 50 moves. The win contributed to Carlsen’s overall victory in the match.

The 2020 Chessable Masters Final was the second-to-last event of the Magnus Carlsen Tour 2020. The tour had produced consistent Carlsen wins throughout the pandemic period; this particular event maintained that pattern with Carlsen winning the final match against Caruana 2.5-1.5 (across multiple day-matches).

The pandemic online chess era — May 2020 through summer 2021 — saw approximately 50 major elite online events. Carlsen won approximately 30 of them. The dominance was unprecedented in any chess format. The contrast with his earlier classical World Championship match performances (against Karjakin 2016 and Caruana 2018, both close affairs) was striking; in faster online formats, Carlsen was effectively unbeatable.

Opening context

The opening sequence runs 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6, after which the players entered the middlegame proper.

See also

For more on this game’s protagonists and theory, see Fabiano Caruana and Magnus Carlsen.

Match notes

This Chessable Masters Final game sits in post-Carlsen and new generation era. Master-level chess of the period was published in tournament bulletins, magazine annotations, and — for the most-studied games — in published opening monographs by the participants and their successors. This game is preserved in the open historical record and can be replayed in full above.