Chess: Fabiano Caruana closes in on Stavanger win as Magnus Carlsen trails

“You work for a long period of time and the results don’t really show, but at some point everything just comes together and you start to play better” was how Fabiano Caruana described his performance in Stavanger this week. Caruana followed up his first round win against Magnus Carlsen by leading all the way, and heisstill there at the start of Friday’s final round.

It has been something of a comeback. At his peak in 2014, Caruana achieved the highest ever tournament performance, rated at 3098, in the Sinquefield Cup, and he also reached his personal peak of 2851, the all-time third best after Carlsen and Garry Kasparov. In 2018, he tied his world championship match with Carlsen 6-6, drawing all 12 classical games before losing the speed tie-break.

Caruana’s rating again approached its peak in 2020, but then his results deteriorated, partly due to a sense that Carlsen was his superior and partly because of a split with his longstanding coach. His rating dipped below 2800, and he was in danger of dropping out of the world’s top 10.

Carlsen’s abdication of the world crown last year recharged Caruana’s ambition. The commentator Maurice Ashley described his colleague’s focus: “ I know for a fact that for Fabi it’s world champion or bust, especially now that Magnus has abdicated the throne. He’s thinking: ‘I’ve got to show my stuff right now, particularly with all the young players coming up.’ Time is ticking, he’s 30 now.” The elephant in the room is the general perception among top players that China’s Ding Liren is a subpar world champion who will be vulnerable to his next challenger.

In Norway, a critical game was in the fifth round, where Caruana met the teenage generation leader Alireza Firouzja, 19, in an encounter