On April 6, the five-time chess world champion Magnus Carlsen, who is widely regarded as a genius in chess, experienced something quite silly. He was involved in a chess match with Twitch streamer Hikaru Nakamura when his mouse slipped.
What a game it was! It was the “Losers Final” at the Champion Chess Tour Chessable Masters 2023: The match before the final, where an opponent for Fabiano Caruana was being sought.
The winner of the grand final receives a prize of $30,000.
This was the situation: Carlsen competed against Hikaru Nakamura, a grandmaster who also streams on Twitch.
The two played the first games to a draw, which led to an “Armageddon” game: Nakamura got the black pieces. Therefore, a draw was enough for him to move forward. Carlsen had to win.
Chess has reached the mainstream due to Netflix’s “The Queen’s Gambit”
Under maximum pressure, Carlsen foolishly slips with the mouse
Here’s how the match went: The clock was ticking down, and the pressure on both increased. They were in the endgame, each having 3 pawns, their king, and the queen.
Carlsen pressured Nakamura’s king with the queen. As both players had only seconds left, Carlsen slipped in the silliest way possible with the mouse and moved his queen to an uncovered square, where Nakamura could easily take it with the king. Nakamura took the queen, and the match was over.
Carlsen angrily hit the desk. That was it for him.
Nakamura seizes the chance to insult the Botez sisters
How does Nakamura see it? In an analysis of the match on YouTube, Nakamura comments on the move and first uses the world champion’s mistake to take a jab at his rivals on Twitch, the Botez sisters.
He refers to Carlsen’s mistake as the “classic Botez mistake.”
However, Nakamura believes that even without the mistake, the game would have resulted in a draw, and he would have entered the final anyway.
Last match as world champion and then this
What made the match so special? Carlsen and Nakamura are considered the best online chess players in the world.
For Carlsen, according to the website Kotaku, it was his last event as world champion. He announced in July 2022 that he would not retire but would relinquish the title because he no longer wants to defend it. Defending the title has been associated with more negative than positive experiences, even when he wins.
But Carlsen surely imagined his exit as world champion differently than to go down so foolishly with a mouse slip.
