Magnus Vs. The World Update: World Strikes Out With Unconventional ...c5

Chess.com’s historic "Magnus vs the World" Vote Chess match has attracted a record-breaking attendance with 100,000 registrants breaking the previous 70,000 record against former World Champion Viswanathan Anand. Over a dozen moves into the game, this match has already broken its own record, currently boasting 120,000+ participants and counting!

It's your chance to play against Magnus Carlsen in Freestyle chess - with 60,000+ teammates!

Join in on Magnus vs. The World! 👇 pic.twitter.com/5dRkf2Zw0Z

— Chess.com (@chesscom) March 31, 2025

As the community contemplates its 14th move at the time of writing, let’s take a look at all of the drama and plot twists that have freestyled us to this historic moment.

World number-one GM Magnus Carlsen is not only playing his first official match against the general public, it’s also the first time in history that a former world chess champion is playing a match of this magnitude in Freestyle Chess, also known as Chess960. Caissa shuffled the 960 possible starting chess positions and set the stage for an epic freestyle match:

“The World’s” point of view - ready to freestyle with the GOAT! 

Randomizing the positioning of the pieces throws classical opening theory out the window, leading to fresh positions and ideas from the very first moves of the game. What would Magnus play as his first freestyle move? On April 4th, he kicked the game off with the most popular move in classical chess: 1. e4, coupled with a post on his X account:

The biggest chess match in history is Freestyle Chess🙌

Think I’ll start with 1.e4 pic.twitter.com/jWkZbdkrH7

— Magnus Carlsen (@MagnusCarlsen) April 4, 2025

As one of the community coaches for the match trained in classical chess, it felt a bit jarring to seriously consider a move almost universally condemned in classical chess - an early push of the f-pawn to f6. Despite Grandmaster Ben Finegold's words of classical chess wisdom to "never play f6," in this particular freestyle position, the f-pawn does support the center and opens diagonals for the queen and bishop without weakening the king - which in this case started the game on the queen’s traditional square - d8.

Never say never! 1...f6 is a playable move here.  

Although “never play f6” was overruled by 11% of the community who voted in favor of this move, we decided to follow Magnus’ lead by claiming a fair share of the center with 1…e5. 

The back rank may be freestyling, but it’s still classical chess for the pawns. In a classical game, 1. e4 e5 may signal a very solid, maneuvering struggle, but Magnus cranked up the central tension immediately with 2. d4 , offering at least a temporary pawn sacrifice

As the central struggle intensified, the 2…f6 supporters doubled, with 22% of the team (Community coaches IM David Martinez and your author included) voting to defend our pawn with classical “Slav Defense” and "Caro Kann" vibes in mind. Ultimately, with a 52% team endorsement, we decided to capture the temporarily undefended pawn. 

The community wasn't alone in thinking capturing this pawn was a good move. Several world-class Grandmasters took a break from their own freestyle adventures to comment on the position during the 2025 Paris Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, including Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, no stranger to Chess 960 success himself, stating "After …exd4, Black is probably winning the game. Personally I don’t see the compensation for White…"

If we weren’t going to push the f-pawn in the first three moves, leave it to Magnus to lead by example, confidently supporting his center with 3. f3 , opening up the window for his queen to potentially reclaim the pawn on d4. Despite some alarming whispers to push our own c-pawn forward to defend the pawn, the community united around the healthy developing move 3…Nc6, supporting our claim in the center.

Magnus spent the next two moves activating his knight and recapturing the temporary pawn sacrifice on d4, sending shockwaves through the community. Did the positional maestro misplace his knight, overlooking a tactical opportunity for the community?

During the initial opening moves of this match, Magnus was also busy breaking records winning the 2025 Paris Freestyle Chess Grand Slam as well as scoring a perfect 9/9 games on his path to winning the Grenke Freestyle Open. Was it possible the world number-one was suffering from “freestyle fatigue” and simply overlooked 5...Bc5? Magnus’ knight in the center of the action felt like a bullseye for the community to target. Now that the knight on d4 is aligned with its queen on the same diagonal, an initial surge of voting euphoria elevated the “pin first, ask questions later” move to the top vote: 

Thankfully, a massive team discussion effort allowed us to swerve out of danger just in time, supporting the lesser evil of activating Magnus’ queen with a knight trade rather than voting for a bishop’s disappearing act. 

Little did we know at the time, but trading knights opened the path for the c-pawn to sing us to potential positional shipwreck. Move by move, the call to push the c-pawn grew louder and louder.

One great thing about this historic match is that newer players to the game can learn quite a bit about chess strategy. A key lesson to be learned is why a single move attack may feel great, but pushing a pawn is always a bridge-burning decision. Pawns can never move backwards. After Magnus activated his queen on d4, we once again were faced with an early voting trend  favoring a "bridge-burning" pawn move to ...c5, attacking the queen for one move but irreparably damaging our queenside pawn structure for the rest of the game.

Thankfully, led by WIM Luciana Morales, the Chessable team jumped in to the world's aid, explaining why moving the pawn to ...c5 was such a dangerous positional concession: 

2) More than 20% voted for 6...c5

It might be tempting to kick the queen out of the center BUT there are long-term positional consequences to advancing the c-pawn too much. pic.twitter.com/sqkPswVMDX

— Chessable (@chessable) April 11, 2025

After narrowly avoiding the loss of a piece, the community's next six moves were mostly healthy, positive moves, in no small effort thanks to active members working together to find a positive path forward. Beneath the surface of these positive community moves, however, the undercurrent of ...c5 lingered, creating a scenario where we were primarily voting against an early ...c5 voting surge, and agreeing to support a more reasonable-looking alternative:

Magnus castled queenside Chess 960 style, a rule that takes a bit of time and practice to appreciate. We now faced a new crisis: 8...c5 was running wild in the early voting. It's only likely rival was developing our bishop to d6. The team vigorously discussed ideas, shared variations, but ultimately, what may have saved the team from a positional mistake were memes like this: 

Separated by just over 600 votes, 8...Bd6 outmaneuvered 8...c5 just in time! Not entirely without ...c5 lurking in the rear-view mirror, the community continued to successfully freestyle with Magnus for several moves: 

The community's team spirit was shining brightly as the tension in the position continued to build, centralizing our queen and preparing for the ensuing middlegame struggle. Magnus moved his queen to b4, provoking another voting crisis for the team: 

Since the third move of the game, I started to share the concept of "anti-candidate moves first," deciding what we should NOT play before identifying healthy candidate moves to consider: 

The anti-candidate move effort did not prevent the popularity of initial ...c5 votes, but we dodged every premature pawn lunge so far. After Magnus played 12. Qb4, like a 64-squared matador, he waved his red cape at the c7 pawn once again. Could we resist the urge one more time and focus on completing development? 

*screams in positional disaster* pic.twitter.com/7NZZQKVz0B

— Chess.com (@chesscom) April 20, 2025

Despite a vigorous team discussion, exchanging concrete lines of analysis, and resorting to "all memes on deck," even if the second and third moves combined votes, it wasn't enough to stifle the roar of the c-pawn's desire to attack the queen for a single move. 

c5 finally won the vote... but at what cost 😵‍💫 pic.twitter.com/kAiqsHYWnU

— Chess.com (@chesscom) April 21, 2025

The team had avoided so many tactical and positional pitfalls, seeing 12...c5 on the board as we waited for Magnus' enlightened response felt particularly painful. Magnus gave us enough time to process our own versions of the seven stages of grief, and all felt lost when Magnus shifted away from our "bridge burning" pawn on c5, greeting our unprotected a7 pawn. 

As we accepted our new post c7-c5 pawn lunge reality, something remarkable happened. The 1% vote to resign and other frustrations from previous decisions took a backseat to a practical question: How do we defend our pawn and keep the game going? As a team, we united to defend our pawn without making any more unnecessary weaknesses by moving our king to b8. 

The community's resilience suddenly was on full display. 12...c5 was a tragic, but not game-ending positional mistake. Once we recovered from the shock of the vote and resurfaced, the doors of possibility once again opened. We shifted our king one square, focusing on embracing maximum resistance and trying to ask practical questions to Magnus. If we refuse to collapse, is the path to victory so simple? As we waited for Magnus' next move, we anticipated likely candidate moves and discussed possible ways to meet them. The team discussion identified community approved moves that we would be ready to play early in the voting process, hoping to build critical mass for a healthy move to shine in the voting process, attracting other enthusiastic early voters to support a healthier top candidate move early and often.

The Community Plans and Magnus Freestyles

The community recovered from our earlier misstep and prepared to face whatever Magnus would throw at us next. We mentioned that if Magnus didn't play one of the moves we anticipated, then 14...Bc6 was a healthy developing move we would support if there wasn't an obvious reason not to play it. Sure enough, Magnus "freestyled" around our plans with 14. b3. Unphased, as I conlcude writing this piece, the community played 14...Bc6. 

Before a single pawn was pushed, we knew our chances of defeating the world number-one were far less than the powerful opponents he faced in his recent Freestyle tournaments. We can, however, reflect upon what we've learned during our incredibly eventful first fourteen moves. Narrowly avoiding the loss of a piece on the fifth move, energetically promoting positive moves that eclipsed less desirable options for several moves, and perhaps most importantly, resurfacing after a serious positional setback, finding a way to ask practical questions to stay in the game. 

It's been an honor serving as one of the community coaches in this historic match. I look forward to see what we can create and face together as a team. We have seen some incredible twists and turns during the first 14 dramatic moves of our freestyle adventure against Magnus. The story continues - come join us and be a part of making chess history - one vote at a time!