In a tension-filled but ultimately straightforward affair, world number one Magnus Carlsen comfortably dispatched Hans Niemann in the live semifinals of the 2024 Speed Chess Championship.
It was their first face-to-face battle since the Norwegian lodged his cheating accusation at his young American counterpart, and while the final scoreline read 17.5-12.5, Carlsen at one point had a ten-point lead and simply cruised in the final portion of a match with many technical issues.
Heading into the match, Hans Niemann’s cheating scandal and Carlsen’s role in igniting it has made this a box office gold affair for chess fans all around the world, especially seeing how the world number one repeatedly dodged opportunities to play against the young American at the World Rapid Team Championship.
The trash-talking was in full force from both sides, with Carlsen saying “If I have a decent day, I’ll probably win without too many issues,” and Niemann countering that “I think I broke him in the Sinquefield Cup,” referring to the controversial 2022 match. Despite the American grandmaster’s impressive upset wins over Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Wesley So in the earlier rounds, he was no match for Carlsen here, falling behind to a near-unassailable five-point deficit after the opening 5+1 portion of the match that effectively sealed his fate.
After a tied 3+1 section, Carlsen dominated the early portion of the bullet play, then, with the match already wrapped up, he ultimately let multiple opportunities slip as he cruised to a spot in the grand final against Alireza Firouzja who scored a big victory over Hikaru Nakamura earlier in the day.
Though both players displayed flashes of brilliance, it was a tense affair with notable errors throughout—and not just in terms of blunders made. While there was no significant controversy during the day, the match and the broadcast were marred by technical issues throughout, with peripheral-related problems and apparent server issues causing multiple delays across the bout, including an extended timeout with just a few minutes to go at a score of 17.5 to 10.5, bringing the series to an anticlimactic conclusion after two consolation wins by Niemann.
“I was waiting for this match to end at least since the five-minute portion was over,” Carlsen said in the post-match interview, saying “it went off the rails after” as “we were both blundering left, right, and center” and that he was “going through the motions” from that point onwards. He added that it was a “strange” day in a low-key discussion with the hosts: “If I play anything close to how I played today [in the grand final], I’m just gonna lose.”
Tomorrow, the 2024 Speed Chess Championship will conclude with the grand final clash between Carlsen and Firouzja, with Niemann and Nakamura set to battle it out in an all-American clash in the third-place decider. It will either be Carlsen’s fourth or Firouzja’s first victory in the competition.
