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 flawed spot, immediately costing him the match. Not solely did this knock him out of the match and price him an opportunity on the sizable $30,000 high prize, however this was additionally the final occasion he’d take part in because the reigning World Champion.
Final 12 months, you would possibly do not forget that one of many greatest tales on the earth {of professional} chess was the shocking defeat of Carlsen by the hands of the younger Grandmaster Hans Niemann. The gorgeous upset shortly sparked on-line accusations of dishonest, with one specific Reddit (joke) principle about vibrating anal beads spreading like wildfire. Carlsen believes Niemann is a cheater and Chess.com accused him of dishonest, too. Niemann denied the fees 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 will all finish with a easy error attributable to 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As reported by Chess.com, Carlsen was competing in opposition to his outdated rival, Nakamura; the 2 are thought-about to be two of the very best on-line chess gamers on the earth. They have been competing in an armageddon-rules play-off within the Losers Bracket. However within the closing seconds of the tense match, Carlsen unintentionally dropped his queen on the flawed spot. In response to 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 match continues to be ongoing, and Nakamura has superior out of the Losers Bracket and towards the prize cash.
As for Carlsen, this seemingly gained’t be the top of the world. Whereas he’ll vacate his World Champion title quickly, he gained’t be retiring. In July 2022, he defined in a podcast that he’ll stay an energetic chess participant and has occasions and matches to come back sooner or later. He simply now not wished to defend his title, as he discovered it was beginning to be a extra destructive than constructive expertise, even when successful.
Nonetheless, I guess he didn’t have “mouse slips and I lose my closing match as World Champ in a million-dollar match” on the bingo card for the way this chapter of his profession would wrap up.