With 22 seconds left on his clock and the option of queening his pawn, Magnus Carlsen 'thought' for 14 seconds. He then 'under-promoted' his pawn to the knight even as Viswanathan Anand was looking at the rival's hand to see which piece was coming on the board.
Five moves later, Anand, playing with white pieces, had to resign which ended the heart-stopping, fortune-fluctuating game. The climax in the French defense game (Winawer variation, 72 moves) once again underlined why these two players are considered titans of the game. "Anand first created fortress followed by some counterplay. And then, there was this stalemate idea too," Carlsen told the official broadcast. "That (making knight instead of queen) was the only way to keep the game going."
Besides taking the stalemate out of the game, the move also forced Anand to move his checked king.
Carlsen's win with black pieces ensured four points and his team SG Alpine Warriors to 9-7 win over Ganges Grandmasters in the seventh round of the Global Chess League (rapid format) in Dubai on Wednesday.
R Praggnanandhaa also won with black pieces on the sixth and last board against Andrey Esipenko. Richard Rapport and Hou Yifan had beaten D Gukesh and Irina Krush for Anand's team, but due to the tournament's innovative scoring system, the same number of wins with white pieces don't negate black's wins.
In the other matchup of the day, Balan Alaskan Knights defeated U Mumbai Masters 8-5 with the only decisive game coming on the sixth board as Raunak Sadhwani beat Javokhir Sindarov.
