Watch Bill Gates Lose a Chess Match in 79 Seconds to the New World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen

Last Novem­ber Mag­nus Carlsen, then only 22 years old, became the Chess World Cham­pi­on when he sound­ly defeat­ed Viswanathan Anand in a best-of-12 series match held in Chen­nai, India. Carlsen won three games, tied ten, and lost none. Only the sec­ond chess cham­pi­on from the West since World War II (and the first since the “eccen­tric genius” Bob­by Fis­ch­er), Carlsen sud­den­ly found him­self a celebri­ty of sorts, get­ting air­time on TV shows. Appear­ing on the Scan­di­na­vian talk show, Skavlan, a few days ago, Carlsen delight­ed view­ers when he played a game of speed chess against Bill Gates, the wun­derkind of a pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion, who co-found­ed Microsoft when he was only 20 years old. So how did Gates hold up? Well, let’s just say that, true to its name, it was a game of speed chess. Gates lost speed­i­ly — in 79 sec­onds and just nine moves.

Not that he needs it, Bill got a lit­tle con­so­la­tion yes­ter­day when it was announced that he and Melin­da will be the com­mence­ment speak­ers at Stan­ford’s grad­u­a­tion this com­ing June.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Famous Chess Match from 1910 Reen­act­ed with Clay­ma­tion

Chess Rivals Bob­by Fis­ch­er and Boris Spassky Meet in the ‘Match of the Cen­tu­ry’

Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi Square Off in a Mon­strous Game of Chess (1934)