On April 6, 5-Time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen misplaced in a dramatic and shocking approach: His mouse slipped and he moved his queen to the fallacious spot, immediately costing him the match. Not solely did this knock him out of the event and value him an opportunity on the sizable $30,000 prime prize, however this was additionally the final occasion he’d take part in because the reigning World Champion.
Final yr, you may keep in mind that one of many largest tales on the planet {of professional} chess was the shocking defeat of Carlsen by the hands of the younger Grandmaster Hans Niemann. The beautiful upset shortly sparked on-line accusations of dishonest, with one explicit Reddit (joke) concept about vibrating anal beads spreading like wildfire. Carlsen believes Niemann is a cheater and Chess.com accused him of dishonest, too. Niemann denied the costs and in October 2022 sued Carlsen, his chess app Play Magnus, the web site Chess.com, Chess.com’s Daniel Rensch, and streamer Hikaru Nakamura for $100 million.
However earlier than all of this, Carlsen had already introduced his plans to vacate his Chess World Champion seat. And Thursday’s match in opposition to Hikaru Nakamura was a part of his final occasion as champ. I doubt anybody anticipated it could all finish with a easy error brought on by a mouse slip.
Carlsen’s misclick prices him the match
As reported by Chess.com, Carlsen was competing in opposition to his outdated rival, Nakamura; the 2 are thought-about to be two of one of the best on-line chess gamers on the planet. They have been competing in an armageddon-rules play-off within the Losers Bracket. However within the remaining seconds of the tense match, Carlsen by chance dropped his queen on the fallacious spot. In keeping with chess grandmaster David Howell it was “the worst attainable mouse slip.” Proper after the error, Nakamura took down Carlsen’s misplaced queen and the sport ended immediately.
The event remains to be ongoing, and Nakamura has superior out of the Losers Bracket and towards the prize cash.
As for Carlsen, this doubtless received’t be the tip of the world. Whereas he’ll vacate his World Champion title quickly, he received’t be retiring. In July 2022, he defined in a podcast that he’ll stay an lively chess participant and has occasions and matches to return sooner or later. He simply not wished to defend his title, as he discovered it was beginning to be a extra adverse than optimistic expertise, even when successful.
Nonetheless, I guess he didn’t have “mouse slips and I lose my remaining match as World Champ in a million-dollar event” on the bingo card for a way this chapter of his profession would wrap up.
