Carlsen threw in the towel against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and exited the playing hall in a huff. (FIDE| Lennart Ootes)
Magnus Carlsen sat on his seat looking up in the sky, muttering away. He could not believe what he had just done. It was a blunder from the five-time world champion which was unexpected and uncharacteristic in equal measure.
It took a while to sink in for the Norwegian. But finally, Carlsen threw in the towel against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and exited the playing hall in a huff. What made matters worse was that his team, the Alpine SG Pipers, lost 5-14 to the upGrad Mumba Masters with defeats for Richard Rapport and Daniel Dardha. Rapport, in fact, allowed Pragg’s coach Peter Svidler — who had not experienced a win in his six games at the second edition of the Global Chess League — his first victory after two defeats and four draws. Only Praggnanandhaa managed a victory for the Pipers’, beating Vidit Gujrathi, his senior teammate from the Indian gold medal-winning Chess Olympiad team. The rest of the games in the clash — Hou Yifan vs Koneru Humpy and Kateryna Lagno vs Harika Dronavalli — ended in draws.
The object of Carlsen’s exasperation was a blunder he made on the 31st move against Frenchman Vachier-Lagrave. Playing with white pieces, Carlsen opted for the Basman-Williams Attack — which is named after International Master Mike Basman who played the variation in a tournament in 1980 in Israel — after the game started with an Anti-Grunfeld variation in the Indian Defence.
With his three first moves, Carlsen played d4, c4, h4. By the 13th move, Carlsen had picked off three of Vachier-Lagrave’s pawns on the centre of the board, leaving himself a pawn more on the board than his opponent. By the 30th move — rook to d4 attacking Carlsen’s lone remaining knight — Vachier-Lagrave had no knights left on the board compared to Carlsen, who was down a rook.
The best move at that stage, the computer pointed out later, would have been to have a rook exchange with Carlsen taking Vachier-Lagrave’s piece on e5 while allowing the Frenchman to take his rook on d2. On the next move, Carlsen could have used his knight to jump Vachier-Lagrave’s lone standing bishop on c6. That nifty one-two punch would have left Carlsen material up.
Instead, the Norwegian chose to move his last rook from d2 to c2, indicating to Vachier-Lagrave that he was free to take his knight, which was anyway protected by the bishop. The evaluation bar immediately plunged in favour of Vachier-Lagrave, indicating that the five-time world champion had blundered. The Frenchman never let go of his advantage on the board, despite seeing Carlsen gain back material at one stage. Vachier-Lagrave also maintained a hefty five-minute advantage on the clock. After battling on for 22 more moves, Carlsen resigned.
Bizarre tournament
Carlsen has had an interesting tournament so far. He lost to Alireza Firoujza in one of the earliest rounds on time after having a completely winning position, which ignited a debate on the no-increment rule that is in place for this event. Recently, he made the news for alleging that Nihal Sarin had made “several illegal moves” in the game against Daniel Dardha, a claim which was refuted by the GCL’s three-member appeals commission.
In seven games at the second edition of the Global Chess League, Carlsen, one of the greatest players in history, had managed to win just once, defeating Anish Giri of the PBG Alaskan Knights, despite his prowess in the faster time controls. He has been held to draws by Viswanathan Anand, Vachier-Lagrave, Anish Giri and Hikaru Nakamura previously.
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