The world No 1 is facing a crunch match against China’s Ding Liren, who is a point behind him and has favourable white pieces

Magnus Carlsen is fighting hard for a strong result this weekend at Shamkir, Azerbaijan, as the world champion, 28, struggles for peak form and a high place in the all-time legends pantheon where chess fans compare him with Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov.

Three months ago Carlsen ended an embarrassing streak of 21 consecutive draws. It has been replaced by a positive statistic, 46 consecutive classical games without defeat, still a far cry from the world No 3 Ding Liren’s 100-game unbeaten run against top-class opposition, but significantly a personal best for Carlsen, whose track record since 2015 has been marred by occasional defeats against lesser lights.

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During his entire world title series with Fabiano Caruana in November, Carlsen was always just fractionally ahead of his opponent in the live ratings and could have dropped to world No 2 with a single defeat. Now this statistic, too, reads more pleasantly.

Carlsen is a whopping 33 rating points ahead of the American and his rating is at its highest since 2016. His all-time peak of 2889 created in 2014 remains distant but he is closing in on the 2856 mark which was the old record set by Kasparov in 2000.

The Norwegian, who has been first in all his three previous Shamkirs, set out his stall in a confident pre-tournament interview where he said he had come to win and described himself as “married with chess … I only think about my games and protecting my title as world champion”.

The pairings gave him three blacks in the first four rounds (of nine), yet he took a clear lead with 2.5/3, exploiting tiny endgame advantages before slowing down as experienced opponents refused to take any risks. Leaders on Friday’s rest day were Carlsen 3.5/5, Vishy Anand (India) and Sergey Karjakjin (Russia) 3.

Saturday’s sixth round (midday start) is potentially a key moment as Ding is a point behind with the favourable white pieces. Mutual respect may prevail, although Ding has played in a sharp style so far.

Carlsen is at the crossroads. A strong finish next week will mean his second elite tournament win in a row after Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee in January, and give him impetus for the equally strong Grenke Classic in Karlsruhe, Germany, from 20 to 29 April. Anything worse and the Fischer and Kasparov fans will be ready with their thumbs-down.

Alireza Firouzja, 15, is the youngest player in the world top 100, and the Iranian teen has been tipped as a future Carlsen challenger. Significantly, he is already close to that at the increasingly popular online one-minute bullet chess (one minute for all moves, with no per-move increment).

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Carlsen and the new US champion Hikaru Nakamura are the only bullet players superior to Firouzja on the chess.com site which has become the main bullet arena. Since 1 February Nakamura leads the teen just 9-8 in head to heads.

Over the board, Firouzja tied for first in the strong Sharjah Open last week where he won this week’s game in the style of the tactical legend Mikhail Tal. It is the kind of victory that Tal would have won in his pomp, a Sicilian Defence where White sacrifices a rook, knight and bishop and at the end is poised for checkmate, all in just 22 moves. Just one caveat-the black player was first round fodder, rated 500 points below the grandmaster.

3613 1…Rd1+! 2 Nxd1 Qd4+ 3 Ke1 (if 3 Kc1 Qa1+ 4 Kd2 Qd4+) Qg1+ 4 Kd2 Qd4+ with perpetual check.