Global Chess League: How Magnus Carlsen blundered against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave to lose with white

The entity of Carlsen’s exasperation was a blunder helium made connected the 31st determination against Frenchman Vachier-Lagrave. Playing with achromatic pieces, Carlsen opted for the Basman-Williams Attack — which is named aft International Master Mike Basman who played the saltation successful a tourney successful 1980 successful Israel — aft the crippled started with an Anti-Grunfeld saltation successful the Indian Defence.

With his 3 archetypal moves, Carlsen played d4, c4, h4. By the 13th move, Carlsen had picked disconnected 3 of Vachier-Lagrave’s pawns connected the centre of the board, leaving himself a pawn much connected the committee than his opponent. By the 30th determination — rook to d4 attacking Carlsen’s lone remaining knight — Vachier-Lagrave had nary knights near connected the committee compared to Carlsen, who was down a rook.

The champion determination astatine that stage, the machine pointed retired later, would person been to person a rook speech with Carlsen taking Vachier-Lagrave’s portion connected e5 portion allowing the Frenchman to instrumentality his rook connected d2. On the adjacent move, Carlsen could person utilized his knight to leap Vachier-Lagrave’s lone lasting bishop connected c6. That nifty one-two punch would person near Carlsen worldly up.

Instead, the Norwegian chose to determination his past rook from d2 to c2, indicating to Vachier-Lagrave that helium was escaped to instrumentality his knight, which was anyhow protected by the bishop. The valuation barroom instantly plunged successful favour of Vachier-Lagrave, indicating that the five-time satellite champion had blundered. The Frenchman ne'er fto spell of his vantage connected the board, contempt seeing Carlsen summation backmost worldly astatine 1 stage. Vachier-Lagrave besides maintained a hefty five-minute vantage connected the clock. After battling connected for 22 much moves, Carlsen resigned.

Bizarre tournament

Carlsen has had an absorbing tourney truthful far. He mislaid to Alireza Firoujza successful 1 of the earliest rounds connected clip aft having a wholly winning position, which ignited a statement connected the no-increment regularisation that is successful spot for this event. Recently, helium made the quality for alleging that Nihal Sarin had made “several amerciable moves” successful the crippled against Daniel Dardha, a assertion which was refuted by the GCL’s three-member appeals commission.

In 7 games astatine the 2nd variation of the Global Chess League, Carlsen, 1 of the top players successful history, had managed to triumph conscionable once, defeating Anish Giri of the PBG Alaskan Knights, contempt his prowess successful the faster clip controls. He has been held to draws by Viswanathan Anand, Vachier-Lagrave, Anish Giri and Hikaru Nakamura previously.