Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Levon Aronian, and Arjun Erigaisi played the ‘Impostor’ game on the Freestyle Chess YouTube channel.

Each of the 4 participants receives a slip of paper, 3 of which have a secret word written on them, and one has the word ‘impostor’. Players take turns naming one word related to the secret word, where the impostor’s task is to blend in. The other participants’ task is to figure out who the impostor is. If they guess correctly, the group gets a point. If the imposter figures out the secret word, he gets a point.

In one of the rounds, the secret word was ‘GothamChess’ and Levon was the impostor:

Magnus Carlsen

Magnus Carlsen

World No. 1

”Content? Mediocre.”

“imposter reveals“

“I mean… I was just trying to muck it up a little bit. I think he would have made as much to himself. Not in terms of his content, but in terms of playing chess — I think his content is amazing. Speaks for itself.”

After 4 rounds, Levon Aronian won with 4 points. Fabiano scored 2.5 points, while Magnus and Arjun scored 2 points each.

American IM Levy Rozman (2323) is the creator of the GothamChess YouTube channel with over 7 million subscribers. The grandmasters participated in the video during the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship 2026. Magnus Carlsen (2840) defeated Fabiano Caruana (2795) with a score of 2.5-1.5 in the Final and became the first Freestyle Chess World Champion.

Credit: Freestyle Chess