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The Prince And The Blip In Time

I think it was a very sharp game. I didn’t play a bad game. I put pressure on him and then we went to time trouble.

– Alireza Firouzja, 12.09.2026

This blog has been fairly esoteric in its tone and articulation, as evidenced by

  1. The arbitrary and somewhat obtuse annotations of !! and ??1 in the previous posts;
  2. The months of silence (the author is a slave to procrastination and also easily browbeaten by imagined criticism); and
  3. This item that does naught more than increase the length of the list2.

While the author intends to maintain the absurd theme in this post and going forward, the author must exhibit a bit of candor to open this post. The author was extremely fortunate to witness the following game in person. Watching the game in person was exhilarating and nerve-wracking in equal measure, with these emotions further enhanced by the occasion and the commentary. The author hopes that the spectacle of this game is carried over in the ensuing description??. The game that is the subject of this post is the game between Magnus Carlsen and Alireza Firouzja in the penultimate round of the group stages of the Global Chess League 2026. While there were some consequences of this game to the overall tournament, they are of no consequence to us, the author and the (hopefully) eager reader. The game will be split into two halves, to aid in the dramatic retelling of what was a magnificent game all round. The analysis boards will be presented with a sombre background for the chess board to indicate the sorrow of the author at what could have been. Moreover, the analysis of the game is based on the author’s memory of the commentary of the game and the author’s own thoughts. The distinction between the two will be apparent to the reader, as the perceptive reader might have already guessed that the author does not possess much depth in the understanding of chess.

A Mild Surprise and a Slight Chink

Carlsen with the white pieces (and a mountain of confidence) begins the game with 1. d4, assuming of course that Firouzja would resort to the King’s Indian Defense, as he has on many an occasion in the past. For the benefit of the reader, the King’s Indian Defense opens with the moves 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 yielding a position that looks as such

The author, in fact, plays the King’s Indian Defense extensively, primarily due to the fact that it is a setup-based open. That is, immaterial of white’s moves, black may play 1. .. Nf6 2. .. g6 3. .. Bg7 followed by the immediate castling of the black king. Of course, under threat of physical harm by white, black must preferably run away and avoid playing the King’s Indian Defense.

Instead, Firouzja opted for the Grunfeld Defense, which occurred in this game with the move 3. .. d5, which evoked the surprise of the commentators, the author3 and potentially Carlsen.

Carlsen quashing all manner of doubt, regarding his potential surprise, proceeded to play in the manner that is characteristic of him for the past 15 years. The mildly impatient author would like to turn the reader’s attention to the following position that occurred after the moves 3. Nc3 d5 4. cxd5 Nxd5 5. e4 Nxc3 6. bxc3 Bg7 7. Be3 c5 8. Qd2 Qa5 9. Rc1 O-O 10. Nf3 Rd8 11. Be2 Bg4 12. d5 Bxf3 13. gxf3 c4 14. h4 e6 15. Bxc4.

In this position, Firouzja used his powers of psychic interference to look into the author’s mind (all the way back in the audience) and play the author’s intended move 15. .. Nc6. This move, while being a blatant act of plagiarism, is also an attempt to develop black’s final minor piece and connect the rooks. The notion of connecting the rooks, yields stability to the position as the rooks now support each other and moreover, they add a layer of protection to the black king. No major white piece (rooks and queen) may waltz into the position and harass the black king! In addition, the move adds an air of cheekiness to the position, as Firouzja exclaims “Oh no! My knight!”. The observant reader may note that Carlsen is unlikely to capture the knight on c6 as his queen would be under attack by the black rook on d8.

While the move seems to be cheeky, yet beneficial, black’s position is in fact fairly uncomfortable. While Carlsen’s king is in the center, there is no means to attack it: there are no open lines. Carlsen’s king side pawns have been torn apart (observe that the f2 pawn is stuck behind a pawn on f3 and there is no g-pawn), but Carlsen’s king is very safe currently in the center. Firouzja has his queen on a5 and his bishop on g7 both trained on the pawn on c3, but the pawn is sufficiently defended. If Firouzja could manage to distract Carlsen for long enough to teleport his knight to a4!!, then the pawn on c3 would be weak, with ideas of putting a rook on c8 to increase the pressure. See below for the illustration of the same.

Unfortunately, Carlsen was vigilant of any potential teleportations by Firouzja’s knight, to the dismay of the author. Carlsen chose to proceed the game with the move 16. f4 with the idea to follow this up with the move e4 and render Firouzja’s bishop on g7 impotent.

However, Prince Ali (Firouzja) noticed that this move created a very specific weakness in Carlsen’s position and in swift fashion played the extremely resilient move 16. .. Qa4. The idea is that Carlsen’s move 16. f4, resulted in a weakening of the e4-pawn. The queen now attacks the bishop on c4 and if the bishop were to move, the e4-pawn as well. The loss of the weak pawn on e4 would have exposed Carlsen’s king and simultaneously attacking the lonely white rook on h1!!.

The commentators noted that Carlsen could have thwarted Firouzja’s attack by simply sliding the queen over to e2: the bishop no longer hangs and in turn, Firouzja’s knight on c6 can be captured.

Firouzja does Firouzja things

However, after spending three and a half minutes, Carlsen played the move 17. Qd3 in the hopes of also keeping an eye on the c3 pawn.

Firouzja pounced on the white queen side and played the move 17. .. Na5, occupying the square recently vacated by the queen. And now, the the pressure on the c3-pawn is real!!. The rook on a7 now exhibits the sinister intentions of moving to c8 to further increase this pressure! Moreover, the bishop on c4 is also attacked twice! Firouzja unleashes a devastating attack and starts asking some real questions of Carlsen.

The author notes that the all-knowing and all-seeing engine evaluates this position to be ever so marginally better for Carlsen who has the advantage of 0.2 pawns, whatever that means… Any biological player, of course, can note the difficulty in managing this position under time pressure.

At this stage, the author notes that the energy of the commentators has left the audience on the edge of their seats. Everyone cranes their necks with their breaths held, in anticipation of the seemingly foreign notion of Magnus Carlsen being under the gun; that too, against the prince, as annointed by Carlsen himself! Of course, the author and the masses maintained their silence, while being reminded by the staff holding up the ominous boards of “Maintain Silence During the Games”4. The tension in the vast playing hall was palpable with all eyes trained on the two icons who have a combined total of around 12 minutes to determine the outcome of the game. With careful consideration, the moves 18. Bb5 Qa3 are swiftly played, with the wiseacre and unimaginative engine suggesting that this position (illustrated below) is dead drawn…

Carlsen now heads into a deep think to identify what to do with this position and the chink in the armour widens: Carlsen plays 19. Qd1. To the author, it seems that this is a bad move as it seems to lose the c3-pawn, which to the naive mind of the author, was the pressure point of the position. Carlsen now has little over 3 minutes to play as many moves it requires to survive this game and must make these moves against arguably one of the best speed chess players on the planet.

The author admits that the intensity of the position and the atmosphere in the playing hall was getting too much to bear. The excited voices of the commentators and the wriggling of the author’s neighbours did not do much to aid in these feelings. The author had to make sure to avoid falling off his chair at this stage, a noise that was sure to illict angry hushes from the organisers and potentially disgruntled looks from the players themselves. Nonetheless, given that the author’s focus had wavered, the rest of the game was gone in the blink of the eye. By move 23 (4 moves after the last explicit update given above), the players had a minute and a half each. Firouzja played with a monstrous energy and enthusiasm, having reached what was an extremely comfortable time situation for him. Firouzja began his dance of routing his pieces at lightning speed with a demonic accuracy. Just as the game finished swiftly, as does the description of the game. The author was unfortunately playing his own chess game against other enthusiastic chess fans, when Alireza Firouzja was on stage post-game and hence, the only photograph the author could capture was the following??:

a photo of the stage

The disgruntled reader (due to the poor quality of the photograph) will be glad to know that the author lost that particular game of chess.

footnotes

  1. The author received fairly certain feedback from an acquaintance, that these annotations were, without a doubt, completely meaningless. While the author is forced to disagree, it is satisfying to know that the annotations have their intended effect: confusion. The author is equally confused upon receiving such annotations from chess.com on his games. ↩

  2. Good things come in threes!!. ↩

  3. The author, of course, was surprised as a consequence of the commentators’ surprise. The author is highly impressionable. ↩

  4. The author must admit that this is a paraphrasing at best and it is altogether possible that the sign seemed ominous only to the author. The author is weak of sight and heart. ↩