Despite Anand's one-move blunder against Ian Nepomniachtchi and losses for Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus and Kateryna Lagno, the Knights had stayed in the contest after Arjun Erigaisi and Nino Batsiashvili struck with black pieces. (PTI Photo)It was a day PBG Alaskan Knights would rather forget. An illegal move, a denied draw, two heartbreaking losses resulted in Viswanathan Anand’s team stretching its losing streak to three matches at the 2026 Global Chess League on Tuesday.Everything that could have gone wrong for the Knights did, and it all started with them dropping a winning match against Ganges Grandmasters due to an illegal move.Despite Anand’s one-move blunder against Ian Nepomniachtchi and losses for Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus and Kateryna Lagno, the Knights had stayed in the contest after Arjun Erigaisi and Nino Batsiashvili struck with black pieces. The scoreline hung in the balance with just one point separating the teams.On the Prodigy board, Abhimanyu Mishra had just converted a drawn position into a near-winning endgame. Despite trailing 8-9 in the match, Mishra’s win would have given the Knights a 12-9 victory.But it wasn’t meant to be. With the clock running low, Mishra promoted his pawn to queen but placed it on e1 instead of f1 in a rush, also dropping the rook on the board. Two pieces ended up on the same square at the same time, making it an illegal move.As a result, two seconds were taken off Mishra’s clock, which already had just three seconds left. With effectively one second remaining, the youngest Grandmaster in chess history needed to promote his pawn, replace it with a queen, and hit the clock all with one hand – an impossible task. Hence, the Knights lost a winning match.“I had two or three seconds after I played rook takes f1, g takes f1, promoting to a queen. When I promoted, I took the queen and put it on the square, but somehow the rook was still in that area. The move wasn’t entirely completed. I had to retry with one second left, and I flagged,” said a disappointed Mishra.Story continues below this ad“I saw the entire line… I won the queen. If I won this game, we would’ve won the match as well. It was a very drawn position earlier, and I managed to start an attack. It hurts. What can I say?”The Knights were to suffer another disappointment. This time, it came from the top board in Anand’s clash with Fyers American Gambits’ Javokhir Sindarov. Just like the first match, the Knights had the game in their pocket, with Anand only needing to hold Sindarov to a draw after Erdogmus, Lagno and Batsiashvili had put them in a comfortable position with wins.But with Arjun and Mishra going down in their games, the onus fell on Anand to salvage the match. In a drawn endgame, Anand blundered after refusing an offer to draw from Sindarov, and the game turned on its head. Gambits won the clash, breaking their three-match losing streak.The big result of the day came when bottom-placed Triveni Continental Kings, led by Alireza Firouzja, defeated top-placed Magnus Carlsen’s Alpine APL Pipers. With all boards ending in draws, Chennai boys Aravindh Chithambaram and Pranav V stepped up for the two-time champions.Story continues below this adEarlier, CheQ Mumba Masters snatched three full points from Gambits in a match where Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Carissa Yip won their games with black pieces.(The writer is in Bengaluru at the invitation of Global Chess League)