The Draw Death of Chess is Here — Nineteen Straight Draws in the World Chess Championship: Let Me Introduce Fighting Chess — The Salvation of Chess

Magnus Carlsen won game 10 of the 2016 World Chess Championship Match against Sergey Karjakin to level the match at that point. They went on to play six more games, and all of them were drawn.

In 2018, Magnus Carlsen faced off against Fabiano Caruana. They played for twelve straight draws. That brought the tally at the World Chess Championship to 18 games. Fide (the governing body of world chess) decided then that the next WCC (World Chess Championship) would be extended to fourteen games to give a better chance at getting at least one decisive game.

We were supposed to have that world chess championship in 2020, but the coronavirus had some hand in postponing that contest. But, that contest is playing right now as of this writing. Game one was played yesterday between Nepo (White) and Carlsen (Black) with a draw.

The tally now stands at 19 games without a victor. Was this problem foreseen in the past? Yes, it was — by a great player known as Jose Capablanca.

Jose Capablanca was a world chess champion between 1921 and 1927. During his reign he thought there would come a time in a few years when two masters sat down to play chess that a draw would be the outcome. He called this the draw death of chess.