LakeMonster Battles Magnus Carlsen!

After an incredible qualification effort, ChessKid "LakeMonster" won the right to challenge World Champion Magnus Carlsen last Saturday. The invitation was earned thanks to him playing 606 eligible games in a one week period in our Play Magnus! Contest.

Lakemonster played 12 hours per day for the first four days of the contest, then ramped up his game to 18 hours per day for the final three days! He had to promise his parents that he would make up any missed work over the holidays.

Three other ChessKids all gave a great effort and finished above 500 games. Second place was aaront, third place was azurepurity and fourth place was TerrificLight. All of these kids basically became chess professionals for a week and surely learned a lot by playing so much!

"I took three breaks," LakeMonster explained. "One was to sell and package mistletoe for the Boy Scouts, to have breakfast with my grandfather, and to go fishing Monday morning."

Here he is doing his favorite activity (besides chess of course):

LakeMonster has been playing chess for six years

LakeMonster said that Carlsen is his favorite player and "it would be the greatest honor to play him."

The exhibition matched pitted Carlsen against 11 players in total. While LakeMonster didn't win, he did last longer than the first few wins from Carlsen.

Here is the brave ChessKid playing the Berlin Defense against the champion -- the same opening that GM Viswanathan Anand played four times in their recent world championship match!

For a very brief moment LakeMonster was "up" a piece...well that would be the optimistic way of thinking of things. Then Carlsen used a space advantage to win a pawn, and make a sort of "snowplow" on the e- and f- files. (Maybe he learned it from me? Nah, the other way around!) After that the fisherman needed a lifeline.

Here is the game that LakeMonster will remember forever:

"It was the best day of my life," LakeMonster said after the game.

In case you are wondering, nine other players went down as well. However, one lucky (and skilled!) player used an unexpected queen sacrifice to actually beat Carlsen!

Carlsen said afterward about the move 20...dxc3: "Yeah, I completely missed that one. Well done. After he sacrifices the queen I think it's very difficult for me. It's a typical motif but this cxb2 just slipped my mind. I should have taken more time."

Not to be outdone, in Carlsen's favorite game, he sacrificed his queen too! Queen versus three minor pieces is a subject we've never tackled on ChessKid videos, but maybe we should!

Back to qualification, one more piece of help came from LakeMonster's brother, who did all of his chores for him and played Nerf basketball with him to help him stay awake. It pays to be nice to your siblings ChessKids!

Thanks to all who participated in the contest. It was great seeing so many kids in Fast Chess. Let's keep it up over the holidays!