The biggest possible upset has happened in the Sinquefield Cup as replacement player Hans Niemann defeated world No. 1, Magnus Carlsen, with the Black pieces to end his 53-game streak of classical games without defeat.
Niemann, the lowest-rated player in the field is now in the lead on his own after three rounds of play. With this, he crossed the 2700 rating barrier for the first time in his career, joining the illustrious club of “super-grandmasters,” the best chess players in the world.
His victory came after 57 moves of play in a position that emerged from a rarer line of the Nimzo-Indian Defense, one that didn’t offer anything tangible to Carlsen. The world No. 1 never really found an edge in the even-to-slightly-worse position in the middlegame and erred with a sequence of pawn pushes starting on move 28 as he began to run out of time.
The ensuing position couldn’t stand any serious scrutiny, with Black’s active rook and material advantage more than making up for the relative passivity of the knight. Soon after, Hans Niemann ended up with one extra pawn, then another, and comfortably converted the endgame into a totally winning position.
Much like before, Niemann continued to make headlines with his odd pronunciations in the chess media. His reaction in the post-match interview after scoring the biggest result of his career? “Must be embarrassing for the World Champion to lose to [an idiot like me].”
This result ended the Norwegian’s 53-game unbeaten streak and pushed him even further away from that elusive 2900 rating goal. He is currently on 2856.3 on the live ratings, having lost 4.7 points so far at this event—meanwhile, the 19-year-old Niemann is up to No. 40 in the world, with 2702.3 points on the live board.
Though Niemann did beat Carlsen in a rapid game at the FTX Crypto Cup a little while ago, he went on to lose the match 3-1 and failed to score a single point throughout the event—making this result all the more surprising. Now, he’s in the lead at one of the most prestigious classical tournaments, albeit with six rounds still to be played.
Round four will feature the following matchups:
- Magnus Carlsen vs Shakhriyar Mamedyarov
- Levon Aronian vs Leinier Dominguez
- Hans Niemann vs Alireza Firouzja
- Ian Nepomniachtchi vs Wesley So
- Fabiano Caruana vs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave
