The “Roland Garros of chess” has a winner. With one round still to go, the Norwegian world champion Magnus Carlsen has been proclaimed the winner of theTata Steel 2022 (with 6 victories and 7 draws) a tournament that left some controversy. Find here all the information about this tournament and what were the controversies that were generated in it.
Magnus Carlsen started 2022 brilliantly. After the match against Ian Niepomniachtchi in which he retained his world title, the Norwegian had expressed two things that shook the chess world: the first (and most important) was that if the title challenger within 2 years it was not the French of Iranian descent Alireza Firouzja, he would give up his title; and the second one was that had the intention of reaching 2900 elo points. Obviously, winning this tournament brings him closer to that goal.
The curious thing is that, despite the fact that Magnus Carlsen had a brilliant tournament, his victory came earlier because his opponent in the last game, Daniil Dubov, will not show up to play (belowwe will explain why). In round 12, the Norwegian defeated Fabiano Caruana and thus reached 8 ½ points, which will be 9 ½ due to the absence of Dubov, a score that none of his pursuers (Mamedyarov and Rapport) will be able to match even if they won their last game in round 13.
The controversies of Tata Steel 2022
In this Tata Steel 2022 there were two controversies. Actually, maybe it was only one, because the first one had to do with the anger of several fans at Magnus Carlsen for his attitude in the round 10 game against Sergey Karjakin. After only 16 moves, and with almost all the pieces still on the board, the chess players repeated moves and agreed to draw.
That result favored Carlsen, who at thattime was leading the tournament. However, not a few people were outraged by the passive attitude of the world champion who, it must be said, did not use any illegal means to obtain a beneficial result. The controversy was rather on the internet, where several fans understood it was a “cowardly” attitude on the part of the champion.
The other controversy involves Daniil Dubov (who was recently the victim of the anger of several Russian chess players for being part of Team Carlsen in the Norwegian’s match against his compatriot Ian Niepomniachtchi), who lost his seventh round game by forfeit after refusing to wear a mask due to having been in close contact with a person who has tested positive for COVID-19.
The Russian’s decision had, as expected, reactions for and against. The regulations do not oblige players to use the mask during games. On the other hand, the result of his PCR was not yet known and as a matter of principle, Dubov declined to play with a mask. The truth is that after playing round 10, his PCR was positive (although initially it had been negative) so he withdrew from the tournament without playing the last three games, one of which would be against Magnus Carlsen in round 13.