19-year-old USA grandmaster Hans Niemann yesterday defeated World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen in the third round of the Sinquefield Cup 2022. Niemann broke Carlsen’s strike of 53 unbeaten classical games, passed 2700 ELO on the live rating list, and emerged as the sole leader of the event. In the post-game interview, Hansen enjoyed the analysis of the game, though he was surprised with the computer 00.00 evaluation of the game at the moment when he had a pawn-up endgame. “It’s not human to defend this endgame, it must be winning“, said Hans on the computer evaluation. He also revealed that he was prepared for the very rare opening line Carlsen chose to go with in the game: “I was very fortunate that this opening came on the board, I looked at this today“. Replay the game here
Niemann spoke about World Chess Champion’s body language and revealed that Carlsen’s mannerisms during the game boosted his confidence: “I noticed, sometimes, when he (Magnus Carlsen) wants to assert the dominance, he cracks a little smile. And he wasn’t cracking many smiles, maybe one or two, and that made me feel very good. (…) He also said once in the interview that if he spends 10 minutes on the move that’s a very bad sign. And he did that a lot in this game. So that boosted my confidence. And I think even if it was a draw, he was so demoralized because he was losing to such an idiot like me. It must be embarrassing for the World Champion to lose to me”.
Speaking about his goals in chess, Hans said that he is focused on further improvement and hard work. “Even if I don’t win this tournament, who cares. The goal is to win tournaments, but the eventual goal is to improve chess and become world champion. It’s sort of black or white for me. I see a lot of players who have been the top ten for very long in their career and they are happy. But for me, the top ten doesn’t really mean much. I think in chess, this striving to be the best is motivation. Of course, it’s a long way to go“. For the end of the interview Niemann concluded that he is very happy that he got the opportunity to play the Sinquefield Cup, as Richard Rapport dropped out of it: “If I didn’t have this opportunity, then who knows how long it would take me to show that I can beat top players“. See the complete interview below
Hans Niemann today plays against the World No. 4 and the World’s best Junior Alireza Firouzja. Follow the game live
Read more: Hans Niemann: It’s not a surprise for me that I am beating the top-level players
