Hans Niemann and Magnus Carlsen have been at loggerheads with one another ever since the former was accused of cheating by the world No 1 at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, USA. The two have verbally targeted each other since then, their feud intensifying in recent months with Niemann criticising Carlsen for his stance on FIDE, the Classical format among other topics.
The latest such instance was on Sunday when Carlsen lost his match against D Gukesh in Round 6 of the ongoing Norway Chess tournament in Stavanger, Norway. Playing with black pieces, Carlsen was in a dominant position against Gukesh and was closing in on back-to-back wins against the reigning world champion, having defeated him in the opening round last week.
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Gukesh, in his typical never-say-die attitude, fought on despite the mounting pressure, and eventually turned the tide in his favour after inducing a blunder on the defending champion’s part, completing a fine victory – his first ever against Carlsen – in 62 moves in the process and moving to the third spot on the ‘Open’ standings.
Niemann reshares Carlsen’s pompous social media post
While Gukesh chose to remain humble and describe himself as “lucky” after beating Carlsen, who had banged the table in frustration at the stroke of defeat on Sunday, Niemann couldn’t help but remind the Norwegian of his pompous social media post when he had beaten the Indian in 55 moves in the opening round.
Carlsen had posted on X an image of a quote from the hit HBO series The Wire which read, “You come at the King, you best not miss” along with an image of the character Omar Little played by Michael K Williams. In a post on the same microblogging platform formerly known as Twitter shortly after Gukesh’s victory, Niemann posted the same image but with emojis of a man shrugging.
Niemann has also been in the news recently for of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour in April as well as for undergoing a polygraph test after losing an 18-game blitz playoff against Russian GM Daniil Dubov, claiming he had passed on all fronts in the latter after reportedly being quizzed on the sensitive topic of cheating.
