A day after he lost to Arjun Erigaisi after fumbling his queen and then losing on time, Magnus Carlsen lost his 14th round clash to Armenian grandmaster Haik M Martirosyan at the FIDE World Blitz Championship by forfeit on Tuesday. This time around, Carlsen knocked over four pieces at the same time and then pressed the clock before putting the pieces back on their squares.
As soon as Carlsen hit his clock, Martirosyan protested and stopped the clock to call over the arbiter Chris Bird. After consulting with his colleague, Bird had a long conversation with Carlsen with Martirosyan hearing everything. Eventually, Carlsen accepted defeat.
At that stage, Carlsen had two seconds on his clock while Martirosyan had 10. The action on the board was getting so intense that a plethora of grandmasters, including Fabiano Caruana, Arjun Erigaisi, Alexander Grischuk and Wesley So stood by watching the action when Carlsen knocked over the pieces.
Carlsen was in a must-win situation, with nine points after Monday’s 13 games which left him a full point behind the troika of leaders Arjun Erigaisi, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Fabiano Caruana.
After losing to Arjun on Monday, Carlsen had slammed a balled fist on the board in a scene reminiscent of his incident at Norway Chess, where he had made global headlines after losing in a classical game to reigning world champion Gukesh Dommaraju.
Carlsen has had other incidents at the World Rapid and Blitz Championship in Doha, including pushing away a cameraman after a defeat in the World Rapid Championship.
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