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

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).

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.

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

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 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 Gukesh and Arjun Erigaisi.

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.Most Read
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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.