Ian Nepomniachtchi won the 2022 Candidates Tournament with a round to spare, earning the right to challenge World Champion Magnus Carlsen in a match. Nepomniachtchi finished with 9.5/14, 1.5 points ahead of second place finisher Ding Liren. Carlsen defeated Nepomniachtchi 7.5-3.5 in the 2021 World Chess Championship match.
Vasily Smyslov was the first player who won consecutive Candidates Tournaments. Smyslov won the famous 1953 Zurich Candidates Tournament before achieving a 12-12 draw in a match versus World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik, who retained the title based on the World Championship match rules in place at that time. Then, Smyslov won the 1956 Amsterdam Candidates Tournament before beating Botvinnik 12.5-9.5 to claim the World Champion title. Botvinnik was entitled to an automatic rematch the next year, and he defeated Smyslov 12.5-10.5. Remarkably, Smyslov advanced to the Candidates Final in 1984 at the age of 63 before bowing to Garry Kasparov, who soon became the youngest World Chess Champion in recorded history.
FIDE--the governing body of international chess--organized Candidates Tournaments on a regular basis from 1950-1992. The tournaments were generally held every three years. In 1993, World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov and his challenger Nigel Short broke away from FIDE to hold a non-sanctioned World Chess Championship match, and for the next 14 years there was both a FIDE World Chess Champion and a linear Classical World Chess Champion.
Viswanathan Anand's 6.5-4.5 victory over Vladimir Kramnik in 2008 completed the reunification of the World Chess Championship, as FIDE World Champion Anand defeated the man who had wrested the linear Classical title from Kasparov in 2000. Kramnik had won a reunification match against FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov in 2006, but then FIDE held a World Championship Tournament in 2007; Kramnik participated under protest (he felt that the World Championship should be determined by match play, not tournament play), and he finished tied for second (with Boris Gelfand) in that event behind Anand.
Other players in addition to Smyslov and Nepomniachtchi who earned the right to be the World Championship challenger in consecutive full Candidates cycles are Boris Spassky (1965, 1968), Viktor Korchnoi (1978, 1981), and Anatoly Karpov (1987, 1990). Spassky lost to World Champion Tigran Petrosian in 1966, but dethroned Petrosian in 1969. Korchnoi lost World Championship matches to Karpov in 1978 and 1981. Karpov lost World Championship matches to reigning World Champion Garry Kasparov in 1987 and 1990. The above list does not include players who played in consecutive World Championship matches without having to go through a full qualifying cycle, such as Botvinnik (who benefited from an automatic rematch clause in 1958 and 1961). It should also be mentioned that Anand won full Candidates cycles in 1995 and 2014. Anand lost the 1995 Professional Chess Association World Championship match to linear Classical World Champion Kasparov 10.5-7.5, and Anand lost the 2014 World Championship match to Magnus Carlsen 6.5-4.5 (Carlsen had dethroned Anand 6.5-3.5 in 2013).
Smyslov and Spassky showed that a player can bounce back from losing a World Championship match to beat the World Champion the next time around. There has been much speculation about how psychologically devastating it must have been for Nepomniatchtchi to lose to Carlsen the way that he did (repeatedly blundering from equal or even superior positions), but in the wake of that defeat Nepomniatchtchi has shown no ill effects; it will be interesting to see if the strength of character that he has shown while earning the right to challenge for the World Championship again will enable him to avenge his loss to Carlsen.
However, the next Carlsen-Nepomniachtchi match may not be decided by psychological factors; if both players play their best, Carlsen is the stronger player. Another factor may prove most important: Carlsen has intimated that if a new challenger did not emerge from this Candidates cycle then he may retire from World Championship matches, because he apparently feels that he has nothing to prove after beating representatives from the previous generation (including Anand) and his own generation. That is a strange attitude for an all-time great to take--one would expect him to feel motivated to beat any challenger who emerges from the pack--and we will soon find out if Carlsen was posturing, if he was seeking publicity to possibly increase the prize fund for the match, or if he is serious about leaving the World Championship scene undefeated in World Championship match play.
If Carlsen withdraws, Nepomniachtchi will play a World Championship match against Liren, based on Liren finishing second in the 2022 Candidates Tournament.
The perils of prognostication are very apparent when one looks at how wildly off the mark many of the "expert" predictions about the Candidates Tournament turned out to be. Chess Life Online's commentator GM Jacob Aagard has written some wonderful instructional books, but if you want to make money wagering on chess you would be well-advised to bet the opposite of whatever he predicts. Nepomniachtchi was supposed to fade down the stretch, but instead he dominated the entire event, clinching victory with a round to spare and emerging as the only player to not lose a game. Ding Liren was supposed to be rusty after not playing much over the board chess since the COVID-19 pandemic began, but he finished second. Teimour Radjabov supposedly did not even belong in the field, but he finished a strong third (edging out Hikaru Nakamura on tiebreaks) just a half point off the pace for second. The future may belong to 19 year old Alireza Firouzja, but in the present he struggled to avoid finishing last, ending up in sixth place 3.5 points behind the winner and just .5 points out of the basement.
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