Magnus Carlsen’s reign over chess ends with a slip of the mouse

The Norwegian grandmaster lost online when he accidentally gave up his queen by dropping it on the wrong square.

Norway's grandmaster Magnus Carlsen made a technological chess blunder for the ages when his mouse slipped during his game against longtime rival Hikaru Nakamura. Picture: AFP

Magnus Carlsen had mere seconds left on the clock of the final game he would play as World Chess Champion. He was near the end of the tie-breaking game in a format so dramatic it’s called Armageddon.

Then he made a technological chess blunder for the ages.

Carlsen was locked in a fierce battle on Thursday with his longtime rival Hikaru Nakamura, the American grandmaster known as a wizard of speed chess. The two men were playing out a tight endgame as time wound down in their online game. That’s when the highest-rated player of all time offered the world a reminder that elite chess in 2023 isn’t just about calculation and pattern recognition.

It’s also about mouse dexterity. And with the game on the line, Carlsen’s mouse slipped.

Both players were down to their final seconds, and most pawn pushers could have seen the next logical move for Carlsen: moving his queen to capture one of Nakamura’s remaining pawns. Instead, Carlsen simply gave away his queen, accidentally.

Carlsen seemingly intended to take the pawn as he moved the queen across the row toward it. But then he dropped the queen too early on a different square where Nakamura’s king could simply take it.

Carlsen realised the gravity of his mistake instantly. He shoved his chair back away from his computer, spun around in disgust and appeared to slam something. Nakamura clapped his hands and pumped his fists. The commentators were in utter shock.

“What’s happened there?” British grandmaster David Howell shouted on the stream. “Magnus has mouse-slipped!”

“Unbelievable!” the American grandmaster Robert Hess added.

But it was actually quite believable. Carlsen had done it before. At the Oslo Esports Cup last year, Carlsen gifted opponent Quang Liem Le of Vietnam his queen in similar fashion.

“It’s going to take a miracle for Liem to win this game,” Howell said then, moments before the miracle arrived. And then: “Magnus has mouse-slipped!”

It was the first time in Howell’s life that he had uttered such a strange and unlikely sentence. He couldn’t have guessed that he would utter the same words a second time in less than a year.

Carlsen’s blunder might have drawn less attention had it not coincided with the end of an era for the Norwegian genius: this marked his last official game as reigning world chess champion. Carlsen, who has held the title since 2013 and won the championship five consecutive times, opted last year not to defend his crown.

Instead, grandmasters Ding Liren of China and Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia were to convene in Astana, Kazakhstan, from Friday to begin the match to replace him.

The mistake also adds to the most closely watched rivalry in modern chess. While Carlsen has towered over the game, Nakamura has been regarded as one of the few players with the pure talent to take him on. Nakamura, who is also the game’s most popular streamer with 1.8 million followers on Twitch, has particularly excelled in speed formats – just like the game he played against Carlsen on Thursday in the Chessable Masters tournament.

Carlsen and Nakamura had already drawn two rapid games, with the winner earning a spot in the tournament final, before this dramatic conclusion. They were left to play Armageddon chess, a frenzied format that guarantees a winner. The player with the white pieces gets more time, but if the game ends in a draw then black is chosen as the winner.

Carlsen, playing as white, had to push for a win. Instead, he dropped his queen.

The Wall Street Journal