This was a big game. Game 6 of the 2018 World Championship had seen Fabio Caruana come close to breaking the deadlock and in Game 7, he was expected to push on even though he was playing black.

But Magnus Carlsen, the defending champion, was simply nonplussed. He is calmly waiting for his opponent to make a mistake. That calm can be extremely unnerving but for now, Caruana is more than holding his own.

In the past, Carlsen has used the strategy to good effect against the likes of Vishy Anand but in Caruana, he has a younger and possibly hungrier opponent.

The seventh game was a Queen’s Gambit Declined where Fabiano unleashed the first surprise with the little-known 10...Qd8 and ended up getting a rather comfortable half point at the end of 40 moves.

During the press conference, Carlsen confessed that his response to the variation “was way too soft.”

“I knew that the move existed, I just didn’t expect it,” Carlsen said. “It wasn’t too much of an unpleasant surprise since I felt like there should be many safe options for white. There must have been chances to play for something, but what I did was just way too soft.”

Play

But this is also the point in the match where Caruana will start to get a little angsty. Will anyone want to go into Rapid and Blitz against Carlsen?

The draws, though, have come as a result of neither player making any major errors.

“After the first game, the games have been pretty tight. We haven’t really given many chances to one another, so it’s kind of natural that a lot of the games will end peacefully. Things could have happened in (Game 6) and the first game. There could have been decisive results, but none so far,” said Caruana in the press conference.

Many will also remember that Carlsen’s last world title defense against Russia’s Sergey Karjakin had also opened with seven consecutive draws. He managed to come through then as he will hope to this time round too.

But for now, the world awaits a game that will break the deadlock because that is when the real fun will begin.