“Iranian teen” makes it a better headline, anonymizing him makes it more of an out-of-nowhere sports story. Stop looking for racism in everything, you’re looking to stir something up when there’s nothing there. (And I see you’ve edited your comment to remove the “this is racist” rant)
I’m more annoyed by the headline’s implication that Carlsen would find this defeat shocking. He wouldn’t. Magnus and Alireza have been acquainted for a few years now. They’ve played many times. Carlsen is fully aware of how strong his opponent is.
He might have been fazed for sure. Carlsen is famously grumpy about losing. And there's a big difference between losing a single game, and losing a match consisting of several games. It's much more difficult to dismiss the latter as a fluke.
Now obviously this wasn't a fully serious match format, but then again Carlsen prides himself on his dominance under short time controls.
after all, it was in rapid playoffs that he defended his world champion crown against both Karjakin and Caruana. It was only once it came to that when he would simply blow them out of the water.
