c/o Max Vitek, Staff Writer

To start off this semester, we will be looking at a game by Magnus Carlsen, possibly the greatest chess player. He is the highest-rated competitor, considerably further than anyone else, and the current world champion. It is a historical anomaly when he loses two games in a row. In practically every tournament, he is the favorite.

In this game, he is playing in the second round of the Bilbao Chess Masters in 2012, a yearly tournament in Bilbao, Spain that would gather the strongest players from the previous year’s events (this tournament has unfortunately been discontinued as of 2016). Carlsen, with the white pieces, is playing a blitz game against Fabiano Caruana, an incredibly strong Italian and American Grandmaster with some of the best preparation and calculation and who was once a contender for the world champion. In this game, the players started with a Sicilian Defense, Carlsen taking a Catalan-like setup on the kingside. After just 11 moves and an uncharacteristic positional error by Caruana, most likely due to the fast time control, we find ourselves in the following position. Carlsen has a slightly inconspicuous move setting up a positional massacre against the uncastled black king. (White to move)