The Week in Chess

Jan-Krzysztof Duda defeated Magnus Carlsen in the fifth round of the 8th Altibox Norway Chess tournament. This was Magnus Carlsen's first loss since the 31st July 2018 when he was defeated by Shakhriyar Mamedyarov at the Biel Chess Festival. According to Tarjei J. Svensen (@TarjeiJS on twitter) the unbeaten streak lasted 125 classical games or 2 years, 2 months and 10 days and that Carlsen was probably lost at some stage in four of them and "close to lost" in another four before his luck finally ran out today.

Duda had been really struggling prior to the rest day and Carlsen probably felt obliged to push for a win today which he did via a very sharp line of the Caro-Kann with castling on opposite sides. Carlsen was very much the one making the running at the start but Duda did not back down in the face of such aggression. Carlsen thought for about half an hour over 15...Re7 and was definitely doing fine after giving the exchange up with 19...Rxa4 but after that starting with 21...h4 (21...Ng4!?) 22.h3 (22.Re3!) 22...Ng6 he was always struggling to keep enough compensation and the final nail was probably 30...Qg2? (30...f6 kept a certain amount of practical chances) he was definitely lost because after the forced 32...Qxc4 he loses his Queen to Rh8+ in a number of lines so he had to give up a rook instead. Duda held his nerve in time trouble but brought home the point in the end.

This was the first round where all the games were decisive. Levon Aronian won a very fine game with black against Fabiano Caruana to take the lead in the tournament and Alireza Firouzja moved into third place with a victory over Aryan Tari but the ending of Carlsen's long unbeaten streak really dominated the whole day.

The tournament has an extremely unusual, if not unique, pairing system which means that now they have reached the half way point they will repeat the pairings in reverse order, this means that the players meet tomorrow with reverse colours so Carlsen has chance of revenge with the white pieces, Duda has the chance to really make his tournament whatever the other results.

Round 5 Standings: 1st Aronian 11pts 2nd Firouzja 10pts 3rd Carlsen 9pts 4th Caruana 7pts 5th Duda 4pts 6th Tari 1.5pts

Round 6 pairings Sunday 10th Oct 4pm BST: Carlsen-Duda, Tari-Firouzja, Aronian-Caruana.