17-Year-Old Beats Magnus Carlsen in World Rapid Chess Championship

Each player gets 15 minutes for all moves at the World Rapid Chess Championship. Three minutes for all moves is what players get in the World Blitz Chess Championship.

What happened? Carlsen entered both events. A little-known 17-year-old from Uzbekistan made a clean sweep of Magnus Carlsen and the global chess elite on Tuesday, setting a world age record. Nodirbek Abdusattorov won the World Rapid championship in Warsaw by defeating Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi. After 21 rounds of three-minute games on Wednesday and Thursday, France's Maxime Vachier-Lagrave defeated Poland's Jan-Krzysztof Duda in a tie-break to win the World Blitz title. Alireza Firouzja was third, but Carlsen was well behind in 12th place. He said that some days you don't have it. I wasn't close to the level I needed to be. Abdusattorov is the youngest ever world champion. The regulations excluded Carlsen and Caruana from the play-off due to their inferior tie-breaks, but he was still in a four-way tie on 9.5 points. The rules were denounced by an angry Carlsen. Either all players on the same amount of points join the play-off or not.

Abdusattorov easily drew with Black, then won the second game despite missing two teammates.