Was it ever really in doubt? No matter the format, no matter the location, no matter the event, no matter what changes in the chess world, Magnus Carlsen is the constant. The Norwegian phenom has once again established his superiority in the chess world under the Team Liquid banner, and much like the keys of his vanquished opponents crushed into his trophy, there were three standout elements to his impressive victory. Here's how it all went down.

Forming a plan for the format

No-increment chess, where you never get extra time on your clock after making a move, is mostly a relic of the past these days in the professional setting. This is a big part of what makes the Esports World Cup chess event stand out: not only did it feature a 10+0 format (meaning both players had 10 minutes for the whole game without any increment), but it was also played on computers, meaning your mouse skills and actions per minute (APM) also factored into the equation.

Having these ‘mini-matches’ also meant that, like your serve in tennis, making good use of your game with the white pieces was paramount for a good performance. You couldn't just stack up draws and hope for the best: you had to go in for the kill.

While Carlsen has always been excellent at all formats of chess regardless of the time control, he has been focusing much more on faster events (rapid and blitz) these days, where his edge is arguably even greater over the field. For a tournament like this, you need to know when you need to calculate a critical line and when you can't do so because of the time constraints. Carlsen's chess intuition is second to none, and he has put it to great use in Riyadh, only losing two games during his entire run.

"I was just trying to play by intuition, flow, more than anything else," the world number one commented after his first day of games. Which indeed is a key part of what you need to do in this chess format: play clean moves, avoid messy complications, and keep an edge on the clock. Look at the game below: 25…Nd3 may not have been the objectively best move, but it offered a straightforward follow-up and an easy set of moves to make. Sometimes, passing the ball back is more than good enough in high-level chess.

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If an opening or an ensuing middlegame requires too much precise calculation, it is not the right choice for this kind of tournament. Carlsen did just that, playing the solid c4-d4 setups with White and converting them with ease, letting him play for even quieter lines with Black once the crucial first win in the two-game mini-matches were secure.

Clock management

Apart from a few key exceptions – including his only loss to Firouzja in the double match of the grand final – Carlsen expertly held a time advantage throughout his tournament run. This is always a valuable advantage to have in chess (and an underrated one by amateur players): pressuring your opponent with quick moves means they have no opportunity to think while your clock is the one ticking. Eventually, they find themselves in a situation where they have to act on instinct and napkin math while knowing you can sit back and take your time to calculate a precise continuation.

This was an especially important factor at the Esports World Cup, as no-increment chess is an extreme version of this. In some cases, you may engineer a winning position but without the means to physically execute on it. "Dirty flagging," the phenomenon where you just keep shuffling your pieces in a completely losing position (or setting up sneaky traps) until your opponent runs out of time, was always going to be a big part of this tournament.

Magnus Carlsen had such a great event that he rarely had to resort to these underhanded tactics, mainly because he always kept a lead, if not on the board, then on the clock. Building up a time advantage in the opening or the middle game is even more decisive than normal when there isn’t any increment available to claw back the seconds.

Carlsen understood full well when it would have been a mistake to dedicate a long think to finding the precise continuation, as well as the power of a surprise move that forces your opponent to chuck out all their previous calculations to face a new threat. Even though it ended in a defeat, the first game of the second set is an excellent example of this, with the Black h-pawn quickly marching down the board on moves 5 and 6 serving up a haymaker of a "what is going on here" for Firouzja, who needed a blunder and a miracle to ultimately turn around the affairs for his sole victory in the grand final.

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"The Magnus Effect" – having an aura sure does help

There is a lot that we can learn from following the chess games of the greats, but there is one part we will never be able to replicate: the effect their sheer presence has on their opposition. If a higher-rated opponent suddenly makes a move that feels wrong, your first instinct is to think that they see something that you have missed. When it's the final boss of chess himself that makes an odd-looking decision, you will often have to burn some time to confirm that it was indeed a mistake. Those precious seconds could cost you in the end. 

Many of the elite chess grandmasters in this tournament would have played certain moves quicker or relied more on their instinct had they not been playing against Magnus Carlsen himself, but every bit of hesitation also played into the chess G.O.A.T.'s approach. It's an advantage that is only conferred to the absolute best players of the game.

Be it his dominant win over Nihal Sarin in the quarterfinals or the nailbiter series against Nakamura in the semis, the playoff bracket was where this advantage truly shone for Carlsen. But for my money, it was the very last game of the tournament that highlighted this the most, when Firouzja, who hadn't lost a single encounter at the EWC before meeting Carlsen, facing a must-win situation, didn't pounce at a slight inaccuracy.

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Already down on the clock and with his back against the wall, Firouzja couldn't pull the trigger on the objectively correct 17…Nxe5 and played the slower d6 instead. It was his best and only opportunity to punish a bit of loose play by Carlsen, and it feels like he would have played the knight move against almost all other chess players on the planet. But it wasn't just the fact that he decided against Nxe5: it's that he spent two of his remaining six and a half minutes on the choice, second-guessing himself into an eventual time scramble he found no way out of.

In the end, the Esports World Cup has shown that no matter the format changes, it's not mouse skills and flagging that would decide the winner; no matter the format, your chess skills will shine through. And on this occasion, Magnus Carlsen was peerless.