On April 6, something really stupid happened to five-time world chess champion Magnus Carlsen, who is generally regarded as a genius in chess. He was engaged in a chess match with Twitch streamer Hikaru Nakamura when his mouse slipped.
What was that game? It was the “Losers Final” at the Champion Chess Tour Chessable Masters 2023: the game before the final where an opponent was sought for Fabiano Caruana.
Whoever then wins the grand finale will receive $30,000 in prize money.
This was the situation: Carlsen competed against Hikaru Nakamura, a grandmaster who also streams on Twitch.
The two drew against each other in the first few games, resulting in an “Armageddon” game: Nakamura was able to get hold of the black pieces. So a draw was enough for him to progress. Carlsen had to win.
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With maximum pressure, Carlsen slips really stupid with the mouse
This is how the match went: The clock ticked down, the pressure on both of them increased. You had reached the endgame, everyone still had 3 pawns, his king and his queen.
Carlsen pressed the king of Nakamura with the queen. With both players down to seconds, Carlsen slipped his mouse in the dumbest way possible, pushing his queen unprotected into a square where she could easily take Nakamura with the king. Nakamura took the queen and the match was over.
Carlsen banged the desk angrily. That’s it for him.
Nakamura uses Chance to insult Botez sisters
How does the Nakamura see it? In an analysis of the match on YouTube, Nakamura goes into the move and uses the world champion’s mistake to give his rivals on Twitch, the Botez sisters, a hand.
He describes Carlsen’s mistake as a “classic Botez mistake”.
But Nakamura believes even without the mistake, the situation would have ended in a draw and he would have advanced to the final anyway.
Last match as world champion and then that
What made the match so special? Carlsen and Nakamura are considered to be the best online chess players in the world.
For Carlsen it was his last game as world champion. He announced in July 2022 that while he is not retiring, he is giving up the world title because he no longer wants to defend the title. Because defending the title is associated with more negative than positive results, even if he wins.
But Carlsen certainly imagined his departure as world champion differently than going down so stupidly with a mouse slip.
The best chess player in the world no longer wants to be world champion, he prefers to crack an unachievable high score