Not everybody’s forte in life is showing up on time for planned events. But sometimes people with a noticeable habit of showing up late receive a pass for their behavior, particularly if they’re a world champion chess grandmaster.
During the recent Twitch livestream of the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz online chess tournament, the chair of Norwegian chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen was conspicuously empty. For the first several seconds of the stream, the commentators of the event had no explanation of the occurrence and could only speculate that perhaps Carlsen had gotten confused because the starting time differed from that of a previous event.
As the commentators tried to fill the empty air with possible explanations, 30-year-old Carlsen suddenly turned up on camera…shirtless. Amidst the laughter of the other hosts and the bored nonreaction of Carlsen’s competitor Hikaru Nakamura, commentator and fellow chess grandmaster Yasser Seirawan remarked that the latecomer looked like he’d just gotten out of the swimming pool.
Carlsen appeared on camera for only a second before disappearing again. He then sat down in front of the camera while buttoning up a quickly donned shirt and then walked offscreen again. Commentator Jennifer Shahade excused the behavior, stating, “He lost track of time, guys. He’s throwing on a shirt.” She then quipped, “Don’t worry. That’s not going to be screen grabbed by anyone.” The link to that Twitch screengrab can be found below.
When the tardy grandmaster finally sat down to begin playing, he was only 30 seconds late, and it seemed that the match would continue seamlessly as if no hiccup had occurred. The commentators began to joke about what had just happened, one opining that the incident was “bizarre beyond belief.”
However, almost immediately after sitting down, Carlsen got up from his chair again and hurried offscreen. Competitor Nakamura, who had seemed unamused the entire time, threw up his hands in exasperation just as a commentator noted that, if anything odd happened in the world of chess, Magnus Carlsen would somehow be involved.
And that’s not far from the truth. This isn’t in fact the first time that Grandmaster Carlsen has shown up late to a match and left his opponent hanging. During the 2019 World Rapid & Blitz Championship, Carlsen arrived just as the clocks started. After seating himself, the chess player took the time to sip from his water bottle and then proceeded to remove his jacket and arrange his chess pieces on the board, before finally making his first move 20 seconds into the match.
Source: Twitch
![\"IT電腦補習](\"http://itteacheritfreelance.hk/test/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/logo2-2.png\"){kind=logo}
www.itsec.hk
www.itsec.vip
www.itseceu.uk
Leave a Reply