"It has to be a very bitter pill to swallow for Magnus..." — Nakamura on Carlsen at GCL

Hikaru Nakamura

World's No. 2

“Now remember the one thing I’ve said in this recap and many other recaps recently is tactics, tactics, tactics. Now what happens is Magnus shows a vulnerability. He’s up a pawn. If he were to play a move to pressure his opponent, he would have won the game. I will say he would have won this game with 90% certainty.

But instead, Magnus just underestimates position. He gets very sloppy for a moment and he misses the tactics in the position. And when he plays different move, everything goes wrong just like that.

This was the game that really decided the match. And for Magnus, it has to be very, very disheartening. This is a game that was very much in Magnus’ favor. He played a classic slow positional game, but he made one little slip. He let the game become tactically complicated, and Nepo made a couple of brilliant sacrifices and simply outplayed Magnus once he obtained the initiative in this game.

So, for Magnus, it has to be a very bitter pill to swallow. He started off very slowly. It really felt like he was getting into the grind of things, winning some games, but he loses two of his final three games to Alireza and Nepo, which means that, I think, he basically has a mediocre event.

Definitely not an event that Magnus would be happy with.”