Carlsen defeats Caruana in tiebreak to retain World Chess title

World chess number one Magnus Carlsen has held onto his World Championship title in London.

The Norwegian beat American Fabiano Caruana in a tie-breaker, after they'd drawn twelve regular games in a row.

Reigning chess world champion, Norway's Magnus Carlsen celebrates with the trophy after retaining the World chess Championship in London, Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2018. Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen has defended his chess world championship title by beating American challenger Fabiano Caruana 3-0 in rapid tiebreaker games.[Photo: AP]

It's a fourth world chess championship title for Magnus Carlsen but he says winning this one against Fabiano Caruana was 'hard', and he described him as 'clearly the toughest opponent' he's come up against.

12 drawn games of regular chess set up a tie-breaker event of time-limited games, a format in which carlsen is ranked the best in the world, and far higher than his opponent in london

In the best of four shortened games Carlsen went into a two-match lead, and Caruana resigned in the third, that gave Carlsen an unassailable three match lead in the tie-breaker.

Caruana described his performance as a 'bad day', insisting he hadn't 'put up a fight'.

Fabiano Caruana had hoped to become the first US champion since 1972 after Bobby Fischer.

In the normal length games, after 11 draws over the first two weeks of the championship, Carlsen controversially offered a draw in the 12th, with his eyes on the faster format

It cements Carlsen's world number one position and reputation as the strongest chess champions of the modern era.