Karthikeyan Murali of India accomplished a remarkable victory by becoming the third Indian chess player to defeat the world’s number one chess player, Magnus Carlsen in classical chess. This historic victory occurred during the Qatar Chess Masters tournament, where Murali secured the win despite playing with the black pieces in the seventh round of the round-robin contest. He scored 5.5 out of 7 and joined with the persons having the same score SL Narayan, Javokhir Sindarov, Arjun Erigaisi, David Paravyan, and Nodirbek Yakubboev. Before that, he drew a sixth-round against Parham Maghsoodloo. Notably, the only other Indian players to have won Carlsen in classical chess before Murali were the five-time world champion, Viswanathan Anand, and Pentala Harikrishna. Harikrishna had achieved it when he was just 14 years old back in 2005.
Karthikeyan said after his victory that he was very excited to play with Magnus Carlsen for the very first time in his career history. He has also beaten NR Vishakh, and Q Bi Chen and drew a match with R Vaishali, and Yueheng Jin. Vaishali is Praggnanandhaa’s sister. Karthikeyan is India’s 38th Grand Master at the age of 16.
