Carlsen wins 4th SCC title with greatest score margin in SCC final history

GM Magnus Carlsen won his fourth title at the Speed Chess Championship 2024, defeating GM Alireza Firouzja in front of a live audience in Paris, Report informs via chess.com

It was a dominant performance with a final score of 23.5-7.5; he lost just five games in four hours, drawing five and winning 21.

Carlsen and GM Hikaru Nakamura are still the only players to win the tournament in its almost decade-long history (since 2016). This year, Carlsen put up the greatest score in the Final of any SCC.

As IM Levy Rozman pointed out in the match preview, it was in 2020—still not so long ago—that a 16-year-old boy named Firouzja defeated then-world champion Carlsen in Chess24's Banter Blitz Cup. Since then, he became the youngest player in history to break 2800, won a handful of elite tournaments, and has been hailed by some as the greatest talent of the next generation, especially in speed chess.

In the Semifinals, Firouzja was the first player ever to come between Nakamura and the Final. If Carlsen is the king, GM Daniel Naroditsky called Firouzja the prince. On Sunday, Carlsen proved that the crown is still his, and by what a margin.