Facing Iranian GM Amin Tabatabaei in the fourth round of the latest edition of Chess.com’s ‘Titled Tuesday’, world No 1 Magnus Carlsen came up with a unique opening move that will have raised eyebrows across the chess community.
Magnus Carlsen has ruled chess for more than a decade now, having been the undisputed No 1 since July 2011 and won the FIDE World Championship five consecutive times before voluntarily opting out of it in 2022. Not only is he the best player of the current generation by a fair margin, he is widely considered among the greatest of all time, if not the best.
And such is his influence in the game that he is starting to invent new moves and tactics at this stage of his career, moves that will no doubt be picked up by others and might go on to reshape the game is played. The latest example of Carlsen’s innovation took place in the most recent edition of Chess.com’s ‘Titled Tuesday’ event, in which the 34-year-old Norwegian Grandmaster was up against Iranian GM Amin Tabatabaei.
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Playing as white in the fourth round of the online Blitz event that takes place on a weekly basis, Carlsen opted for a Queen’s pawn opening that developed into an Indian game (1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6). Carlsen then advanced his knight to f3 to which Amin responds by giving the black king a check with his bishop (Bb4+), leading to a Bogo-Indian Defense.
Carlsen blocked the bishop’s path by bringing out his other knight (Nc3), developing a Kasparov Variation of the Nimzo-Indian Defense, leading to his opponent opting for a kingside castle. The Norwegian, however, deviated from what is considered standard thereafter, and decided to spice things up a little bit.
Carlsen takes the chess world by surprise with a unique move
Instead of advancing his queen to keep Amin’s dark-squared bishop at bay, Carlsen decided to advance his ‘A’ pawn. Amin responded by capturing Carlsen’s knight with his bishop (5. Bxc3+), which then was captured by the ‘B’ pawn (6. bxc3).
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Amin tried to make things interesting as well by moving his knight forward (6. Ne4). What truly raised eyebrows, thereafter, was Carlsen moving his g pawn forward in response (7. g4), a move that will have led multiple experts and even other top players scratching their heads.
Carlsen then moved his bishop to g2 (8. Bg2), intending to have his pawn at g4 while setting up a kingside castle.
Watch the unique opening here:
While Carlsen’s unique opening was the key takeaway not just from this game but from the latest edition of ‘Titled Tuesday’, Amin did a commendable job in holding fort against one of chess’ GOATs, playing out a hard-fought 75-move draw via repetition.
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