World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen may be the greatest chess player of all time, but he isn’t winning anyone over with his charm anytime soon.
On Thursday during the early rounds of the Grenke Chess Freestyle Open in Karlsruhe, Germany, Carlsen faced off against Kazakhstan’s Alua Nurman. The 2024 Woman Grandmaster asked Carlsen for a selfie before their match, likely wanting to remember the exciting moment of playing against the world’s unrivaled No. 1. Carlsen happily obliged and appeared to smile in the selfie. Then, moments laters, Carlsen got up and brought an arbiter to their table, seemingly telling him to confiscate Nurman’s phone.
While the tournament rulebook probably prohibits players from having their phones with them during matches to prevent cheating, it was more about the way in which Carlsen ratted out Nurman. He could have politely told her that phones weren’t allowed and had her give up her phone herself after taking the selfie, but he instead essentially chose to snitch on her to a third-party arbiter and make everything much more awkward.
Carlsen innocently sat by as the arbiter confronted Nurman and asked for her phone; the arbiter looked at Carlsen afterward and gestured if everything was okay now. Carlsen nodded, offered a somewhat embarrassed Nurman a handshake, and the match commenced.
Watch that cringe-worthy sequence of events below:
Kazakhstan no.2 Woman Alua Nurman takes a selfie with her opponent Magnus Carlsen before the start of Round 2 at the @GRENKEChess Freestyle Open! Before the start of the round, an Arbiter comes and takes Alua's phone with him.
— ChessBase India (@ChessbaseIndia) April 3, 2026
Video: @ram_abhyudaya/ ChessBase India pic.twitter.com/3KZ8lc17sh
Carlsen, a five-time world champion and record 21-time world titleholder famous for dominating in any format, ended up beating Nurman—and gave her quite the story to tell her friends and family back home.
Carlsen notoriously rocked the chess world a year earlier when he stunningly lost to Gukesh Dommaraju at Norway Chess and violently slammed the table in what some thought was a sore loser move.
His unflattering viral moments aside, the 35-year-old chess superstar won all nine of his games in last year’s Grenke Chess Freestyle Open and looks to be in unstoppable form again in 2026.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen Seen Snitching on Chess Opponent Who Just Wanted a Selfie.
