Hard to say if Magnus overracted as I don't know if we'll ever know for certain if someone from his camp was leaking his opening strategy. Been a crazy time in world chess though!
Hikaru got me absolutely hooked on it and makes watching competitive chess super interesting.
I am trying to reserve judgement until we hear Magnus's side, but intuitively I am assuming he is in the right as I would trust his judgement over (nearly) any other GM and I really doubt he is simply just be having a tantrum about being beaten by Hans - unless he's actually gone insane Fischer style. However, I guess there has been a lot of weirdness around him recently I guess with the WCC withdraw, being acquired by Chess.com, struggling with the 2900 goal and now pulling out of the Sinquefield Cup, so I would like to hear where is head is at. He had a great podcast with Lex Fridman last week though (highly recommended), and seemed in great spirits. Also I already thought Hans was a dickhead prior to this, so I guess it's easy to keep on thinking poorly of him.
I will say though that through this tournament, and the previous rapid chess tournament, I have started to like Hans a lot more. He seems less entitled and a better person than he was a year ago, plus he has been coming up with some great one liners. I hope this all blows over, because he would make a good super GM anti-hero/villain, which we have kinda missed since Hikaru dropped out of super GM classical tourneys (and since his return he doesn't really act like a heel anymore).
Hikaru is great at making competitive chess more interesting. He gets a lot of hate, but I don't think it's all entirely warranted, he's definitely less of a dick than he used to be pre-covid. I saw that Danya Naroditsky commented on the Magnus/Hans situation on his stream last night, which I am looking forward to checking out this evening, out of all the GM's I think I would trust his judgement the most.
