‘The Indians… disciples of Vishy… are coming for Magnus’: Karthikeyan Murali becomes 3rd Indian to defeat Magnus Carlsen in classical chess

India's Karthikeyan Murali takes on World No 1 Magnus Carlsen at the Qatar Masters tournament. (PHOTO: X/Qatar Chess)

Listen to this article

‘The Indians… disciples of Vishy… are coming for Magnus’: Karthikeyan Murali becomes 3rd Indian to defeat Magnus Carlsen in classical chess

00:00

1x 1.5x 1.8x

India’s Karthikeyan Murali became the third Indian chess player to defeat World No 1 Magnus Carlsen in classical chess after he prevailed over the Norwegian at the Qatar Masters tournament. In a round-robin contest, the Indian won despite playing with black pieces in round 7.

Earlier, five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand and Pentala Harikrishna had defeated Carlsen (Hari had beaten Carlsen when he was a 14-year-old, back in 2005).

ALSO READ | Bull run on the chessboard: As number of GMs from India surges, casual fans from nation too rising

Carlsen took a gamble which backfired, whereas the Indian was rewarded for soldiering on in the face of severe time trouble, always finding decent moves barely seconds before his time had run out.

ALSO READ | Magnus Carlsen reveals what he told Praggnanandhaa after Indian teen upset Hikaru Nakamura

“It was very exciting playing Magnus for the first time. I had never played him before this. He has a good edge in the opening but it was quite unclear. My approach was to complicate matters,” the 24-year-old later said to the media channel of the tournament.

Magnus Carlsen faces 6 Indian opponents in 7 rounds at Qatar Master 2023 #chess @QatarChess #qatarmasters2023 pic.twitter.com/Dh52IKj81z

— Keti Tsatsalashvili (@keti_chess) October 18, 2023

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Talking about battling under time trouble, he said: “I just kept thinking I shouldn’t make a blunder.”

ALSO READ | Magnus Carlsen: ‘We’re at beginning of chess revolution in India which started with Vishy Anand

Carlsen has had a shaky tournament so far, losing to 23-year-old Kazakh GM Alisher Suleymenov last week and later admitting that he was thrown off by his opponent ‘wearing a watch in the game’ which made him lose concentration.

The Qatar Masters tournament has a strong line up of players, with Hikaru Nakamura, Anish Giri and Nodirbek Abdusattorov also in the fray. India’s charge is being led by Gukesh and Arjun Erigaisi.

ALSO READ | Meals turn into mentoring sessions as Magnus Carlsen takes India’s teenaged trio under wings

For Carlsen, the match against Karthikeyan, who has a rating of 2611 and is a two-time Indian national champion, marked the sixth time in seven games that he had come up against Indian opposition. Even if the Norwegian may not, Carlsen’s biggest rivals saw the funny side of this.

“This is the future for him. The Indians are coming for him. It’s going to be one Indian after another, after another, after another, after another — all the disciples of Vishy!” Chess24 dot com’s X handle quoted Nakamura as saying after the day’s games ended.

To this, Anish Giri, using a Lord Of The Rings reference, replied: “A new plan to defeat Sauron. The disciples of Vishy.”

Back home, the Indians too weighed in on the result.

“What happened to Carlsen in Qatar against 2500-2600’s happens to almost every GM in Indian opens against opposition below 2400,” pointed out Srinath Narayanan.