4/21/2021 – Magnus Carlsen loves chess and he loves a challenge. On Monday, after commentating round 8 of the Candidates for several hours live, the World Champion played a 22 game 3+0 Banter Blitz match against the "Challengers", 20 of the world's most promising juniors. Carlsen convincingly won the match with a score of 19.5-2.5. He only lost against Nihal Sarin and Awonder Liang and drew against Vincent Keymer.
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Magnus Carlsen vs Julius Baer Challengers
In the Julius Baer Challenge Tour, 20 juniors, ten male and ten female, compete against each other in a series of tournaments. The idea is to give young talents an opportunity to gain experience against strong opponents, but also to promote female talents by giving them a chance to test their skills against male juniors.
To further fuel the ambition of the young players, on Monday evening World Champion Magnus Carlsen played all 20 Challengers one after the other in a Banter Blitz (3+0) match on Chess24. Anna Muzychuk and Artur Kogan, two of the coaches, who support the talents in the Julius Baer Challenge, also took the opportunity to play blitz against the World's number one.
Carlsen clearly dominated the match and won 19.5-2.5, but he did not win all his games. He lost against Nihal Sarin (India) and Awonder Liang (USA) and drew against Vincent Keymer (Germany).
Carlsen vs Nihal Sarin
Sagar Shah commentated Nihal Sarin's convincing win against the World Champion for ChessBase India.
Awonder Liang was the other player who managed to beat Carlsen – but this game could easily have ended differently.
Carlsen vs Awonder Liang
Only one of the 22 games ended in a draw, and here both players missed chances to win.
Carlsen vs Vincent Keymer
All in all a fantastic performance by Magnus Carlsen – after all, despite their young age, a lot of his opponents are experienced Grandmasters and exceptionally strong blitz players.
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1.c4 e5 2.Nc3 Bb4!? is an opening idea well worth considering. Black immediately threatens to double the pawns on c3 in the style of the Trompowski or Sicilian Grand Prix attack.
Italian Game Powerbase 2026 is a database and contains 8571 top class games from Mega 2026 and the Correspondence Database 2026, of which 479 are annotated.
Videos: Nico Zwirs discusses the Sicilian with 2…e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Qxd4 Nc6 5.Qe3 Nf6 6.Nc3. Mihail Marin examines Sindarov’s 6.Ne5 in the Queen’s Pawn Defence. Plus the ‘Lucky bag’ featuring 41 analyses by Berg, Ftacnik, Gupta and many others.
If you're looking for a dynamic alternative to the Slav, Queen's Gambit Declined, or other mainstream systems, the Chigorin Defence offers exactly what modern tournament players need.
Michael Kotyk presents a complete repertoire after 1.e4 e5, built around creative ideas, surprising move orders, and practical weapons designed to catch your opponents off guard.
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