Sergey Karjakin is Magnus Carlsen’s challenger for the World Championship title after winning the Moscow Candidates Tournament by a full point. Since then he’s been swept up in a whirl of media appearances, including giving numerous interviews to the Russian press. We take a look at some of his comments on the key moments of the tournament, his preparation and his expectations for the match against Carlsen this November.

Sergey Karjakin’s final tournament before the Candidates was the Tata Steel Masters in Wijk aan Zee. After that he took a leaf from Magnus Carlsen’s playbook and headed for somewhere warmer – the United Arab Emirates, it later turned out – to prepare, giving the occasional hint on social media.

Karjakin: It was very important to build up a certain number of ideas, because without surprises for your opponents it’s almost impossible to win such a tournament. In order to do that it was absolutely necessary to hold a training camp, especially as I also had to get some rest and store up energy. The United Arab Emirates was very well suited to those goals. The weather was around +30 and the work went great. By the way, I can already announce my “secret” fourth second – Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.

In that case can you also announce your “non-secret” ones!

Yury Dokhoian, Vladimir Potkin and Alexander Motylev. We did a great job, stored up some ideas and, at the same time, relaxed. I arrived in Moscow in top condition!

It’s always like that – you use a small part of what you’ve prepared. But at the same time, I managed to pose big opening problems to Anand, who’s famous for his preparation, and in some other games as well. Perhaps they weren’t so spectacular, but in terms of the opening I got good positions, and that boosted my confidence. Of course the good start to the tournament also did that. (RCF)

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