World No.1 Magnus Carlsen dealt a big blow to reigning World Champion D Gukesh’s chances in the opening round of Norway Chess, showing his endgame expertise to log three full points.
In what had been touted as the match of the tournament with the five-time world champion playing against an opponent half his age, Gukesh kept the Norwegian defending champion under pressure for most part of the over four-hour-long game of classical chess before the Indian made a losing mistake and lost in 55 moves. Following the win, Carlsen earned three points and is in joint lead with American Grandmaster and World No.2 Hikaru Nakamura, who beat American Grandmaster Fabiano Caruana.
The second Indian in the fray, Arjun Erigaisi, defeated China’s No. 1 Wei Yi in an exciting Armageddon game after the classical game had ended in a draw. Erigaisi earned 1.5 points from the win, while Wei secured 1. The tournament’s scoring system gives three points to the winner in the Classical format. If the Classical game is drawn, the players gain one point each and then play for another half-point in Armageddon. Erigaisi, playing black, played aggressively to take the match to a draw. He will meet Gukesh in the second round on Tuesday.
Two-time World Rapid champion Koneru Humpy scored a decisive win against R. Vaishali in an all-Indian match-up. Playing with characteristic calm and precision, Humpy capitalised on her opponent’s mistake in the endgame.
The Carlsen-Gukesh match went down to the wire, with the Norwegian, playing with the white pieces, pressuring his opponent to make a mistake in the endgame to accurately finish the game in his favour. Carlsen, who hasn’t played an individual Classical event in the whole year since winning the Norway Chess 2024 title, was off to a less-promising start, with the Norwegian admitting that his decision to play the Jobava London did not work out as planned.
“I just realised I don’t know anything," said Carlsen. The Norwegian tried to unnerve Gukesh with the rarely-applied opening, but realised after only a few moves that he was not going anywhere. In fact, Gukesh, playing with black pieces, had neutralised his opponent’s white advantage by the 11th move when he had the Norwegian thinking for more than 15 minutes.
But Carlsen, the five-time world champion who has since moved to shorter formats like Rapid and Blitz and, more recently, Freestyle chess, showed he has not lost his touch in the Classical format. "I tried to surprise him with the opening. I responded the way you often do, especially in the first round, in the absolute wussiest way possible,” said Carlsen.
Gukesh later offered a pawn sacrifice, while Carlsen instead steered towards the kind of endgame on which he has built his dominance in the chess world. “It’s still fairly equal, but there’s this small imbalance as his pawn structure is a little bit ruined,” said Carlsen after the match. Asked if it meant a lot for him to beat the reigning world champion, Carlsen downplayed the moment, saying, “Not necessarily, but every win in this tournament is hard to come by, so I’m happy with that.”
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