ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath. History was made in St. Louis this week. Six of the top nine chess Grandmasters in the world gathered for a tournament called the Sinquefield Cup. By some measures, it was the toughest field of players ever assembled. But that's not even the crazy part.
What's really incredible is that 22-year-old prodigy Fabiano Caruana won his first seven matches in a row, meaning he took down the number one player in the world, the number two player, the number seven player and twice beat the number six and number nine players in the world. Caruana, an American-born Italian citizen, clinched first place with his first non-win, a draw with 23-year-old Magnus Carlsen of Norway, the current world champion. But Caruana remained undefeated. Ben Finegold is a chess Grandmaster himself. And he was at the tournament this week calling the matches. Welcome to the show.
BEN FINEGOLD: Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
RATH: So the tournament, as we said, wrapped yesterday. Fabiano Caruana took first and Magnus Carlsen came in second. But this was decided several days ago, right?
FINEGOLD: Yeah, that's right. It's very unusual in an event of this level that somebody wins so many games in a row. So not only was it exciting for the spectators, it was really exciting for the Grandmasters to see one of their own win, I mean, just play so fantastically. We've never seen it in our life. And we may not ever see it again.
RATH: So what was that feeling for you sitting there? Like, did you feel like you were watching history?
FINEGOLD: I mean, it was like we weren't even there. It was so weird. Like you expect if somebody gets two wins or even three wins, they're probably going to win the tournament, because at this level most games are draws. The players are fantastically strongly. They hardly ever make mistakes. So wins are really hard to come by. Somebody winning seven games in a row - totally unheard of. And we just didn't know what was going on. And in fact, when he did clinch the tournament by drawing world championship Magnus Carlsen around eight, he had a winning position in that game. And Fabiano had a winning position around nine. And he failed to convert and only drew those games. He actually could have had more points. It was just shocking for everybody.
RATH: So could explain, especially for non-chess experts, how did he do it? What is Caruana's style of play?
FINEGOLD: Well, Caruana's very well prepared. He plays very solid chess. And in fact, that makes it even more surprising. There are other players in the world who, you know, have lots of wins and losses and sort of forgo draws. So when they go on streaks like this, it's not really unheard of. Although seven wins in a row, that's unheard of. Somebody who wins three or four in a row, that would be talked about for a long time. And we all sort of jokingly talked about him going 10-0. And at some point it wasn't becoming a joke anymore. I mean, when he was 6-0, 7-0, we were all aghast. We just couldn't believe what we were seeing.
RATH: You know, it was just a few months ago that everyone was talking about Magnus Carlsen as if he were the new king of the chess world. Has that changed now? Is Caruana the heir apparent?
FINEGOLD: Well, a lot of the talk is about Fabiano now. I think most people still believe that Carlsen is a better player. He's the world champion. But, I mean, Caruana's hot on his tail. And actually Magnus said something quite funny in the press conference yesterday. They said could you give a one-word answer to Caruana's performance? And each player said something like fantastic. And Carlson said depressing, which had a lot of laughter from the crowd.
RATH: That's Ben Finegold, a chess Grandmaster and chess commentator. Ben, thanks so much.
FINEGOLD: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.