Chess: Carlsen loses hard-won rating points in a single Oslo club match

Magnus Carlsen’s vintage performance at Wijk aan Zee gained the world champion three rating points in his quest for a world record 2900. A week later the Norwegian, 31, gave them all back with interest on a Saturday night in Oslo to Tallaksen Ostmoe, rated 399 points lower than the No 1.

The very first meeting 22 years earlier between the then nine-year-old Carlsen, rated under 1000, and the 15-year-old Ostmoe, rated over 2200, had also been a draw and a rating upset, but this was the other way round.

In Saturday night’s game Carlsen, White in a Caro-Kann 1 e4 c6, provoked a very early queen exchange, gained a slight edge … then missed a one-move winner. Can you do better?

Carlsen’s progress towards 2900 has been handicapped by his lack of 2800-plus opponents, meaning that his rating gain from a victory is small while a draw is guaranteed to lose him rating points. There has also probably been some deflation at top level in the rating system since 2014, when Fide’s March rating list showed 50 players rated 2700 and above, contrasting with only 38 players over 2700 in the current live ratings.

It would be bizarre for the world champion to abandon his 2900 target so soon after announcing it as a preferred alternative to meeting anyone from his own generation in a title match, and the indications are that he will look towards the St Louis-organised Grand Chess Tour this spring for his next major tournament, before returning to home territory at Stavanger in June. He also starts next Saturday, 19 February, in the Airthings Masters, the first event of the year in the online Meltwater Champions Tour which Carlsen won in 2021.

Yuri Averbakh became the first ever centenarian grandmaster on Tuesday, when the 1954 USSR champion