An incredible sensation happened during the chess world championship on blitz and rapid, held in St. Petersburg (Russia). At the second round of the Rapid, a chess-player from Uzbekistan Shamsiddin Vokhidov, 16, beat the Norwegian grandmaster – the current world champion Magnus Carlsen.
The Norwegian had left the opening with a better position, but did not find a convincing plan to take down his opponent. Shortly afterwards, he omitted the fact that Shamsiddin could trap his queen with 22...Bf8. Magnus played on despite the overwhelming material disadvantage, but had to give up after 36 moves.
This was the second consequent loss of the current champion. In the first round, he faced 30-year-old Ukrainian GM Adam Tukhaev. The 104th seed held his own with the white pieces despite having to play against Carlsen's pair of bishops. It seemed like the World Champion would eventually manage to squeeze a win in an endgame with a queen against two rooks, but when his time was running out he missed the fact that his opponent could give a perpetual check…sadly for Tukhaev, he missed it too.
It is worth noting that Shamsiddin Vokhidov recorded a draw with the Russian Stanislav Novikov. The Uzbek chess-player’s opponent in the next round will be Aleksey Dreyev of Russia.
It should be recalled that the World Chess Olympiad among juniors under 16 took place in Konya city (Turkey) on November 24 - December 3, 2018. During those competitions, Shamsiddin Vokhidov won the first place along with his teammates Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Nodirbek Yakubboyev, Javokhir Sindorov and Sitora Saparova.
Thanks to this result, young chess players were awarded “Spark” cars by the Government of Uzbekistan.
