Hilarious blunder as Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura study wrong opening position for 5 minutes
ChessBase India caught Hikaru looking at the position on the screen just before the start of his game and asking Carlsen, 'Did we look at the wrong position?' Carlsen, too, looked surprised at this. Then, he let out a short laugh as he looked at the board itself.
Remarkably, despite the hilarious error, Magnus beat Arjun in that game while Nakamura drew with Caruana. Both Nakamura and Carlsen were playing with white pieces. Carlsen and Nakamura will be fighting for third place today while Arjun and Caruana will battle for fifth place. Praggnanandhaa will take on Wesley So for seventh spot.
In scenes captured before the match, Arjun and Caruana had opted to analyse the game for the full 10 minutes. Cameras caught both of them sitting on the communal table and sitting on their knees to evaluate what their best response should be. Nakamura meanwhile opted to analyse the position by himself on one of the playing boards. Then, Carlsen walked up to him and joined him to analyse the game. Carlsen, with his white jacket worn only on one shoulder, did plenty of analysing.
'Wait a second, breaking news! Magnus and Hikaru are teaming up. For the first time in this event,' said grandmaster Peter Leko on the Freestyle Chess' Pro Stream.
As the camera focussed on the analysis of the world no 1 and no 2, in the pro commentary stream, grandmasters like Leko, Judit Polgar and Vincent Keymer sounded confused by the moves the players seemed to be making.
When Carlsen played 1.c4 as his opening move against Arjun, that caused even more surprise, as Leko said: 'Wait a second, after analysing d4 for so long, he's played c4. Is he fooling everyone?'
Soon enough, Nakamura too played 1.c4.
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