Carlsen stuns Anand as Warriors usurp Global Chess League lead

Magnus Carlsen lifted SG Alpine Warriors to the top of Global Chess League with a morale-boosting victory over Ganges Grandmasters while beating Vishwanathan Anand in probably the match of the tournament. A huge turnout at Le Meridien got what they came for as Carlsen, playing with black, overturned the tables in a memorable endgame.

Ganges Grandmasters took the lead but, thanks to the unstoppable Warriors prodigy Praggnanandhaa R, the team managed to strike back in a critical moment. In what turned out to be the endgame for the history books, which saw two queens promoted by White and a knight promoted by Black, Carlsen managed to win 10-8 as Warriors displaced the Grandmasters on the leaderboard as both sides look headed to the final as well.

In the other game, Balan Alaskan Knights also scored a timely 8-5 win over upGrad Mumba Masters to inch up a spot from their fifth place at the start of the day.

Following the French defence, a sharp position developed on the board. In positional readjusting, both were pushing, creating traps for each other. With seconds on the clock, Carlsen had to calculate the complicated path to victory which saw White promoting his pawn to a queen twice. In the end, Anand thought he found a way to a stalemate but instead of promoting a queen, Carlsen took out a knight – an unusual choice by all standards – but just what was needed for victory.

“I did not know the score but, judging from what I’d seen before, I thought I had to win,” Carlsen said. “It’s looking pretty good now.  It’s pretty massive, we’ve got to keep it going. We have played with five blacks in a row, won four of them. But now the mentality changes; a draw will not be enough.”

A disappointed Anand acknowledged the genius of Carlsen. “I spoiled the endgame in the end. He’s really good at this,” said the former five-time world champion from India.

For a long time in the match, neither side had the upper hand. The first to make a breakthrough was Ganges’ Richard Rapport. In the Italian game, Gukesh D allowed Rapport to take more space and orchestrate an attack on the black king from which there was no escape. With another game ending in a draw – between Arjun Erigaisi and Leinier Dominguez – the Ganges Grandmasters took the lead.

The next game to finish was between Hou Yifan – the world’s top-rated woman player – who defeated the eight-time American women’s champion, Irina Krush. In a tense position, Krush made a blunder allowing White to easily mate her king.

A glimmer of hope for Warriors came from Praggnanandhaa – so far the most successful player in the tournament with six wins and a draw – who proved his value again, defeating Andrey Esipenko as Black.

As Elisabeth Paehtz ended in a drawn position with Bella Khotenashvili, everything depended on the outcome of the game between Carlsen and Anand. “This is a game for the history books. The titans of chess fighting it out until the end”, said Grandmaster Peter Svidler.

Last Updated on 2 years by Aman Kumar