Magnus Carlsen withdraws from Sinquefield Cup, raises eyebrows

Magnus Carlsen caused a major drama late on Monday night as he withdrew from the Sinquefield Cup, a classical format tournament being held at St Louis, Missouri. The Norwegian announced his decision --- ahead of his fourth round encounter against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov --- via a cryptic tweet which had a short clip of Jose Mourinho wherein the latter says “If I speak, I am in big trouble” during one of his previous press conference about refereeing. The 31-year-old wrote, “I’ve withdrawn from the tournament. I’ve always enjoyed playing in the @STLChessClub, and hope to be back in the future.”

This is the first time in his career that the five-time World champion has withdrawn from a major tournament. Carlsen’s decision created a host of reactions from top players with some openly voicing suspicions of foul play. Carlsen was on 1.5 points from 3 rounds and lost his previous game against Hans. GM Hikaru Nakamura, while streaming on Twitch, felt Carlsen’s move clearly pointed to Hans cheating during his 57-move win in their round 3 clash. “I think that Magnus believes that Hans probably is cheating,” Hikaru pointed out. No one from Carlsen’s team was available to comment. Wesley So, who is part of the tournament, called Carlsen’s move shocking. “Everyone was kind of distracted that he didn’t show up today. It was very shocking to hear that,” Wesley said. Ahead of the fourth round, the tournament organisers delayed the broadcast by about 15 minutes on the request of anti-cheating arbiter David Sedgwick. It is usually done in order to prevent any cheating. To top that, metal detector checks on players too were intensified. On his part, Hans, while speaking to the official broadcast, said, “I am speechless to be honest and it