The Twitter war between Magnus Carlsen and Anish Giri

by Sagar Shah
3/9/2018 – Twitter is becoming a battlefield of exchanges between top players these days. The Candidates 2018 is beginning in a couple of days from now and Magnus Carlsen and Anish Giri have already had quite some serious battle of words on Twitter. While Magnus attacked Anish with all his might, the Dutch GM has been able to maintain his cool. A lot of this happened after it was made public that Anish Giri is working with Vladimir Kramnik in Berlin. We bring you chronologically all of what happened along with some background behind the tweets! | Photo: Lennart Ootes
Scarcely any world champion has managed to captivate chess lovers to the extent Carlsen has. The enormously talented Norwegian hasn't been systematically trained within the structures of a major chess-playing nation such as Russia, the Ukraine or China.

Top players play games off the board too!

Vladimir Kramnik and Anish Giri have been opponents on the board on many occasions. However, for the Berlin Candidates 2018, they have decided to join forces.

Giri will be helping Kramnik to win the Candidates and qualify for a match against Carlsen | Photo: Lennart Ootes

When it was publicly known that Anish Giri would be helping Kramnik, Carlsen made the following tweet:

Magnus' tweet is quite complicated, but can be understood better if you know that Anish managed to beat Vladimir at the Tata Steel Masters 2018 held in January 2018:

 
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1.c4 e6 2.Nc3 Bb4 3.Qb3 Ba5 4.Nf3 c5 5.d4 Nf6 6.dxc5 Na6 7.Be3 Ne4 8.g3 Naxc5 9.Qc2 Bxc3+ 10.bxc3 b6 11.Bg2 Bb7 12.0-0 0-0 13.Rfd1 Qe7 14.a4 d6 15.a5 f5 16.axb6 axb6 17.Nd4 Nf6 18.Bxb7 Nxb7 19.Rxa8 Rxa8 20.Nb5 Rc8 21.Qa2 d5 22.Bg5 Rxc4 23.Qa8+ Kf7 24.Ra1 Na5 25.Qb8 Rc6 26.Nd4 Rxc3 27.Qxb6 Nc4 28.Qb8 Nd7 29.Bxe7 Nxb8 30.Bb4 e5 31.Ra7+ Kg8 32.Bxc3 exd4 33.Bxd4 Nc6 34.Rxg7+ Kf8 35.Bf6 1–0
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Giri,A2752Kramnik,V27871–02018A13Tata Steel-A 80th2

Anish had the following reply to Magnus' tweet:

A couple of days ago MVL wrote a very nice article on the chances of each of the participants at the Candidates. He gave Vladimir Kramnik an outside chance of winning the event, but he mentioned: "In my opinion, Vlad is probably the player in the world who best understands chess. You can show him whatever position, his instincts will seldom let him down. He will always find what the evaluation of the position is and which plan to adopt." Magnus was not so magnanimous as MVL and tweeted the following:

Giri, who is Kramnik's second, stood up for the man he is backing with the following tweet:

Carlsen it seems lost his cool and got a bit rude:

Anish kept his calm and cooled down the situation:

Hikaru Nakamura didn't miss the opportunity to chime in:

These Twitter exchanges have made the Candidates a tournament to look forward to!

Magnus and Anish making their moves at the same time! | Photo: Alina l'Ami

Thanks to this Twitter war, Anish must be highly motivated to ensure that Kramnik wins the Candidates. Good news for the Big Vlad! As for the fans out there, they are having ample of fun:

Source: This article was first published on ChessBase India.

Sagar is an International Master from India with two GM norms. He loves to cover chess tournaments, as that helps him understand and improve at the game he loves so much. He is the co-founder and CEO of ChessBase India, the biggest chess news portal in the country. His YouTube channel has over a million subscribers, and to date close to a billion views. ChessBase India is the sole distributor of ChessBase products in India and seven adjoining countries, where the software is available at a 60% discount. compared to International prices.
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