Spend enough time watching the best chess players in the world play, and even a chess amateur will pick up on something: Space is at such a premium in their games that any seemingly innocent, sensible move—sliding the A-pawn to the third rank to prevent the dark-square bishop from forcing check, burning a tempo to line your rook up with the opposing queen even though four pieces separate them—can be punished several moves down the line. The greats can project themselves forward in time and see weaknesses before they even begin to develop.
That is not what happened on Sunday when Magnus Carlsen lost to current world champion Gukesh Dommaraju. The former world champion played very relatable chess, by which I mean he committed an unspeakable blunder to lose from a winning position and then pounded the table in disgust.
Carlsen and Dommaraju played their second game at this week's Norway Chess tournament on Sunday. It's Carlsen's first classical chess tournament in exactly one year, since he won Norway Chess last year. In the first round of this year's tournament, Carlsen beat Dommaraju in a real thriller of a game, in which both players surprised each other and refused multiple draw-making moves in favor of something more open. In the end, Carlsen held a slight structural edge in an even endgame, forcing Dommaraju to keep making the correct move. Eventually he faltered, and Carlsen won despite having to use the 10-second time increment to make his moves.
On Sunday, it was a totally different affair. Carlsen played a classic Carlsen sort of game, deviating from the book early into his Berlin defense and catching Dommaraju off guard. He steadily consolidated his hold on the board, forcing his opponent to keep squirming to stay alive. Dommaraju did so, valiantly, and yet Carlsen was still poised to convert on his position. But in the time scramble late in the game, Carlsen first ceded a bit of his advantage on the 44th move of the game, then lost it on a fatal blunder at the 52nd, when he inexplicably cozied his knight right up to Dommaraju's king, allowing the latter, two moves later, to go up a knight. The world champ would quickly force Carlsen to resign, and Carlsen slammed the table on the way out.
"Ninety-nine times out of 100 I would lose," Dommaraju said of his position after the win. "I mean, not the way I wanted it to be, but okay, I'll take it." Of the table-banging, he said, "I’ve also banged a lot of tables in my career." It was Dommaraju's first win over Carlsen in the classical format; all we can hope for is this continuing to happen, so Carlsen is forced to come for his 19-year-old foe's world champion title.
