MAGNUS CARLSEN slammed his fist on the table after losing to world champion D Gukesh in a classical game for the first time at the Norway Chess 2025 tournament in Stavanger on Sunday. The outburst came after a rare blunder by Carlsen under time pressure, allowing Gukesh to take control and secure the win in Round 6.
The 19-year-old Indian grandmaster remained calm after the victory, even as Carlsen’s frustration spilled over. After hitting the table and displacing the board, Carlsen offered a quick handshake, apologised to Gukesh, and walked away after patting his opponent on the back.
The result pushed Gukesh to third place in the standings with 8.5 points, just one point behind joint leaders Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, who both have 9.5 points.
“There wasn’t much I could do. It was just clearly lost… luckily he (Carlsen) got into a time scramble,” Gukesh said after the match. “First classical win over Magnus, not the way I expected (or) wanted it to be but I will take it.”
Carlsen, playing with black, appeared to have the advantage for most of the match. However, Gukesh kept the game alive by making the right moves until Carlsen eventually blundered by dropping his knight.
“One thing I learned from this tournament was time scrambles can go out of control,” Gukesh said. Reflecting on his earlier loss to Carlsen in Round 1, he added, “I don’t know, I’m still kind of shaken from that game. I don’t know what happened, basically.”
Speaking to Chess.com, Gukesh remarked, “I mean, (the win was) not the way I wanted it to be, but okay, I’ll take it… I’ve also banged a lot of tables in my career.”
The Round 6 victory marked a turnaround for Gukesh, who had lost to Carlsen in the opening round of the tournament.
His coach, Grzegorz Gajewski, said the win would boost Gukesh’s confidence. “It’s going to give him a bump of confidence. Because once you’ve done it, you know you can do it again. And that’s the plan,” Gajewski said.
“After the first game (which Gukesh lost to Carlsen), we saw that the main problem was time management… So, we decided that we had to correct this time management, and already in the game with Hikaru (Nakamura), we could witness this improvement and progress,” he added.
Arjun Erigaisi is currently tied for fourth with Hikaru Nakamura, both on 7.5 points, following Erigaisi’s Armageddon tie-break win over Wei Yi.
In the women’s section, R Vaishali defeated Koneru Humpy in an Armageddon tie-break. Ju Wenjun and Anna Muzychuk also secured Armageddon wins in their respective matches.
(With inputs from agencies)
England's Jamie Overton celebrates after taking the wicket of West Indies' Gudakesh Motie. Reuters/Andrew Boyers
