Magnus Carlsen starts poorly on Day 1 at World Rapid Championship

It was a rough day for World No 1 Magnus Carlsen at the 2024 FIDE World Rapid Championship, as he ended with three draws, a win and a shock loss to Belarusian Denis Lazavik (Elo 2553) in the fifth round, of the three-day event. He was languishing at 80th place as the tournament returned to USA, and was hosted at Wall Street.
Rapid is considered as Magnus Carlsen’s main event, and he has a rich haul of five world rapids and seven world blitzes through his career, having lorded over both titles in the last two seasons, of 2022 and 2023.
However, Thursday was a torrid start to his title defense, as Carlsen labourer to three draws against American 2519 rated Awonder Liang to start, and Hungarian 2436 Gleb Dudin in Round 3 plus 2578-Aleksandr Shimanov in Round 4. He had one win against 2513-Denis Kadric, before plunging to a loss against youngster Denis Lazavik (2553) of Belarus in the fifth round.
Magnus Carlsen is at Elo rating 2838 and is known to crank up his game at will, and can be expected to do just that in the remaining eight rounds, even as Russia’s Volodar Murzin led the pack with 4.5 points.
In the Rapid format, the time control is 15 minutes per player for the whole game with an increment of 10 seconds per move.
Carlsen was in serious trouble in Rounds 3 and 4 and had to scramble to escape with draws from jaws of defeat against GM Dudin and GM Shimanov. The Hungarian Dudin especially earned himself plenty of chances to throw Carlsen off, with Chessbase quoting Dudin missing Nxd5 on the 38th move, with a e4+ Kf6 followed exd5. However the game continued with a4, and Dudin couldn’t press home the advantage.
GM Shimanov too lined up a few set-ups but fumbled in letting Carlsen trade his rook for a bishop and knight as the endgame expert, allowed a draw.
However the 18-year-old Lazavik was unforgiving as the 2553 player didn’t loosen the stranglehold on the 33-year-old. Magnus Carlsen got himself into a wretched bind with black, and Lazavik jumped on the 31st move to block the h-file, as per ChessBase. Magnus Carlsen lost his queen for a rook and knight, as the teen marched to a win.
ChessBase’s Sagar Shah would call it a bad start, “maybe it’s his worst start ever at World Rapid. He’s on 2.5 out of 5. Completely off colour. He could have infact been on 2 points. Was losing in one of the games he drew,” he said.
Shah reckoned Magnus Carlsen could’ve castled and the position looked equal. “But he went g5. Usually it’s him being calculated and in flow. But today it went wrong. Rook was attacked, Magnus castled and after Bishop went back on g3 it felt like kingside was slightly weakened. The knight went back, pawn became weak. Queen came back. And g pawn was completely lost,” he described.
Though his casually sauntered comebacks are legendary, Shah stressed that Lazavik had dealt a massive blow. “Youngsters are not at all afraid to play against likes of Magnus Carlsen. Can sense Lazavik thinking I have things under control, I can beat Magnus. It was not the case in yesteryears. He used to intimidate youngsters, but this is what the new generation is all about.’
World classical Champion D Gukesh is not at the New York event.

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