Magnus Carlsen's Worst Tournament Ever???
Magnus Carlsen has been World Chess Champion since 2013 and World #1 since 2011, having first reached the top spot at the age of 19. All of these achievements and many more put Carlsen in the running for the best player of all time, which may not even be a debate if Carlsen continues to dominate for the rest of his career. If you have followed Carlsen's career, it is very rare for Carlsen to do poorly in a tournament or even lose a game. From 2018 to 2020, Carlsen went 125 classical games undefeated. However, Carlsen had some mixed results lately, having recently won the Aimchess US Rapid but having been eliminated in the semifinals of the World Cup by Jan-Krzysztof Duda and in the semifinals of the Goldmoney Asian Rapid by Levon Aronian. This made me wonder; what is Magnus Carlsen's worst tournament ever? The first event that came to mind was the 2019 Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz, where Carlsen finished in 6th place with a total score of 13/27, just under 50%. This was an abysmal performance by Carlsen's standards, especially considering 2019 was possibly his best year ever overall. Here is one of Carlsen's many losses, this one being against his rival, Fabiano Caruana.
However, even this arguably wasn't Carlsen's worst performance. Later in 2015, Carlsen scored 3.5/7 in the European Team Championship with a 2670 performance rating. Carlsen began the tournament with 0.5/3, losing to Aronian and Yannick Pelletier. Let's take a look at a moment from Carlsen's game against Pelletier:
All in all, Carlsen is a very strong player of course and these performances are largely outshined by Carlsen's many successes. What do you think is the low point in Carlsen's career? Let me know in the comments. Also, let me know what types of blogs you would like to see me write in the future.
