World's best chess player loses tournament due to 'horror mouseslip'
World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen exited an online tournament on Thursday after accidentally moving his queen to the wrong square, allowing rival Hikaru Nakamura to take it with his king and win the match. Chess.com called the move a «horror mouseslip» for Carlsen, who left the event in third place with $15,000.
After beating Carlsen in that armageddon match(opens in new tab) (a special ruleset for tiebreakers), Nakamura went on to win the Chessable Masters tournament and its $30,000 top prize on Friday, putting him ahead of Carlsen in the rankings for this year's multi-event Champions Chess Tour.
The result of Carlsen's fatal misclick can be seen in the screenshot above (and video below at about 3:30:00). At the top right of the board, Nakamura's king (black) can be seen capturing Carlsen's defenseless queen, which the Norwegian grandmaster had intended to move to b6, capturing one of Nakamura's pawns. Instead, he stuck the piece on f6.
Apparently, this kind of thing happens enough that «mouseslip» is common Chess.com parlance. The commentators knew instantly what had happened after Carlsen reacted and then the move appeared on the stream.
«Magnus mouse slipped!» exclaimed caster Tania Sachdev. «Blundering into that queen! And Hikaru Nakamura takes this match!»
The tournament wasn't the biggest in the scheme of things, but it was notable for being Carlsen's last as the reigning World Champion, a title he's held five times but has chosen not to defend.
«I simply feel that I don’t have a lot to gain [from the World Chess Championship],» Carlsen said on his podcast(opens in new tab) last year. «I don’t particularly like it, and although I’m sure a match would be interesting for historical reasons and all of that, I
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