Carlsen dodges playing with Niemann again as old chess grudge flares up at World Rapid Team Championship

The long-simmering Carlsen-Niemann feud has flared up again in the chess world at the FIDE World Team Rapid Championship, where the decider round would have pitted the two grandmasters against each other, but Carlsen opted to sit out the round instead, leaving Ian Nepomniachtchi in the hot seat.

Magnus Carlsen set off a firestorm of controversy back in 2022 after his loss to Niemann in the Sinquefield Cup, a prestigious invitational event. He retired from the event the very next day and later claimed that his opponent “has cheated more—and more recently—than he has publicly admitted,” referring to a handful of online games the young American has admitted to, adding that “his over-the-board progress has been unusual, and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I had the impression that he wasn’t tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do.”

Since then, there have been threats and lawsuits, abandoned games and bad blood, but the players did have the occasional Titled Tuesday encounter with little controversy, and apart from the chess.com report detailing past online wrongdoings, no further evidence of foul play has emerged. Now, Carlsen decided against playing in the final round of the team match, where he would have had to face Niemann, leaving Ian Nepomniachtchi to play the game out instead. The Russian super-grandmaster ended up drawing with Niemann, and Carlsen’s team ultimately won the round with a score of 3.5-2.5.

While there is no confirmation as to why Magnus sat out the match—since this is a team event with more players than boards played, it is entirely normal for players to sit out certain games—the world number one’s decision to hold back his considerable skills for the final round of play with the tournament win on the line was enough to ruffle feathers in the chess community.

Niemann himself tweeted, “If you aren’t willing to handle things on the chess board, don’t even bother playing. Chess is the greatest combination of art and war. Cowardice leads to inevitable defeat,” to which perhaps the most succinct response came from Hikaru Nakamura, no stranger to the Niemann controversy either, who simply said in his recap video that “it is ironic to see Hans talking about settling things over the chessboard, when, in reality, Hans is the one who did file a 100 million dollar lawsuit and try to settle things away from the board.”

With Carlsen and Niemann both in the quarterfinals of the chess.com Speed Chess Championship, and on the same side of the bracket, to boot, they are only one round away from what would be an explosive encounter in the live finals in September.

As for the fate of the FIDE World Team Rapid Championship title, it ultimately went to world #20 Parham Magshoodloo’s fourth-seeded squad, Al-Ain ACMG UAE, who beat out world champion Ding Liren’s Decade China Team and Carlsen’s WR Chess Team in a narrow fashion, scoring nine match wins and three draws. Niemann’s GMHans.com finished in ninth place with six wins, one draw, and five losses. The competition continues tomorrow with the blitz portion of the event.