March 29, the ceremony of awarding the participants of the Candidates Tournament was held in the Central Telegraph building in Moscow.“I think that the worthy and strong is the winner”, the head of FIDE said. “At the beginning of the tournament I said that all players were equal as per strength. We were witnesses of the fight between, on the one hand, the experience of Vishy Anand and Veselin Topalov and the youthful vim on the another hand. I said that the winner would be the one who had the most spirit, passion and drive. Sergei turned out to be the one of that nature”.
Ilyumzhinov also said that Sergey Karjakin and Magnus Carlsen were worthy contenders representing the different chess schools. But at the same time, they are the age-mates: both are 26 years old. This means that they both have the same sporting nature.
Recall that the fight for the Champion title would not be the first encounter between Karjakin and Carlsen in the United States in November 2016. The Russian has already beaten the Norwegian earlier.
