LONDON - Norwegian Magnus Carlsen won the world chess championship for a fourth time after winning 3 tie-breakers against US rival and world number 2 Fabiano Caruana on Wednesday.

The 27-year-old defending champion, who collected a winner's prize of 550,000 euros ($626,065), and his bespectacled opponent had drawn 12 out of 12 classical games through November.

That stalemate forced the pair into the faster-paced, best-of-4 tie-breakers.

The failure of Caruana, 26, to defeat Carlsen means the United States has not won the chess title since the enigmatic and volatile Bobby Fischer beat Russia's Boris Spassky at the height of the Cold War in 1972.

Caruana will still collect 450,000 euros for his efforts at The College, a Victorian era building in London's Holborn.

Carlsen has been the world's top ranked player for the past 8 years and has now defended his title 3 times since he first won it in 2013.

This year was the first time he had won the championship without losing a single game.

($1 = 0.8785 euros)