In 2021, Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura caused a stir with their ‘Double Bongcloud’ opening, in an online game which began 1 e4 e5 2 Ke2 Ke7, soon agreed drawn. Their act of flippancy, clearly spontaneous, drew a mixed response of laughter and tutting, but that game was unofficial and had no competitive significance.
Similarly, at the World Blitz Championship, held in Samarkand in December, a game between Daniel Dubov and Ian Nepomniachtchi saw the players agree to a draw after White’s 13th move. So far, so unremarkable, and many games at the tournament were concluded even faster. (Some events forbid early draws by agreement, but not in Samarkand).
The joke was that not a single pawn was moved. Instead, both players trotted their knights around, before returning them back to base, swapping them round in the process. The game went:
1 Nf3 Nf6 2 Nd4 Nd5 3 Nb3 Nb6 4 Nc3 Nc6 5 Ne4 Ne5 6 Ng5 Ng4 7 Nf3 Nf6 8 Ng1 Ng8 9 Nc5 Nc4 10 Na4 Na5 11 Nc3 Nc6 12 Nb1 Nb8 13 Nf3 Draw agreed
Evidently, this tickled the players, but each made several moves which were conspicuously stupid.
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