‘Carlsen making same mistake he made in chess,’ says Giri as World No. 1 crushes competition

Magnus Carlsen produced a dominant display to clinch the Grenke Freestyle Chess Open with a round to spare on Monday. The World No. 1 won all his nine rounds to finish on top.  

The Norwegian, who recently won the Paris leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, continued his stellar form at the Grenke event. Carlsen defeated Vinzenz Hillermann, Vaclav Finek, Nils Grandelius, Etienne Bacrot, Victor Mikhalevski, Awonder Liang, Parham Maghsoodloo, Rauf Mamedov and Vincent Keymer to finish with a perfect score of 9 points. American Leinier Dominguez Perez finished second despite being tied on 7 points with seven others, including India's Arjun Erigaisi, due to better tie-break score. 

In terms of the starting positions of pieces in the back rank, freestyle chess is different from traditional chess. There are 960 possible starting positions, which are determined just before the start of a round, making preparations near impossible and traditional opening theory more or less redundant.

In conventional chess, Carlsen has been the most powerful player in more than a decade. Carlsen no longer plays for the classic World Championship, which is why China's Ding Liren and India's D Gukesh have become World Champions in the last two years.

Carlsen has repeatedly said he lacks motivation to play for the classic world championships. That said, he has held the World No. 1 position since 2011.

His recent successes in Freestyle Chess brought out an interesting observation from Dutch GM Anish Giri. "Carlsen is making the same mistake in his new game as he made in chess. He is completing it too quickly," Giri posted.

The funny remark implies Carlsen has probably solved the Freestyle Chess riddle, and might lose the motivation to continue playing it.