The Week in Chess

Five players share the lead on 1.5 points but it is the position of the World Champion who has started with two losses and is dead last that makes the headlines.

Magnus Carlsen had the worst possible start to the Norway Chess Tournament when he went down to a second successive loss, this time to Fabiano Caruana. This was another theoretical Berlin Defence and Caruana said afterwards that he thought Carlsen's 17...Rg8 was an error after which he was better. 18...Na6 (18...Nc2!?) may have also been a mistake and 22...Ne6 was probably just losing and Carlsen didn't find a way to resist, most likely there isn't one, resigning on move 45.

"It's not that he made outrageous moves or anything – it’s just the position out of the opening was bad" Caruana.

Afterwards Carlsen still had his loss on time from round one on his mind being quoted as saying "I am still not happy about yesterday and think it's Stavanger not doing their job." [in not making sure he knew about the change in time control from the year before]

"Today was a terrible day against a very strong opponent."

"I have dug myself into a pretty big hole, but I have won tournaments before where I have lost to Caruana" Carlsen.

In Bilbao 2010 Carlsen started with two losses and Shamkir 2014 he lost back to back games in rounds 4 and 5.

Levon Aronian was again unhappy with his opening as black, this time against Alexander Grischuk. It was a reverse Rossolimo Sicilian. However Grischuk seemed to overlook 15...Ng4 and after that he had to be careful before the game ended in a draw.

Veselin Topalov had the better of a draw against Hikaru Nakamura with a better pawn structure and bishop vs knight in an endgame but he couldn't convert to a full point. Topalov started with deep opening preparation and Nakamura thought he must be lost at one stage but they didn't find anything completely clear in the post-mortem.

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave escaped with a draw from a worse position against Jon Ludwig Hammer. Vachier-Lagrave thought he was even better at one stage when he wasn't really and this led him into trouble but he just managed to draw.

Viswanathan Anand gave up the exchange but in the end couldn't convert an extra pawn against Anish Giri who was just active enough to hold the draw.

Round 2 Standings: Nakamura, Giri, Topalov, Vachier-Lagrave, Caruana 1.5/2pts, Anand 1pt, Hammer, Aronian, Grischuk 0.5pts, Carlsen 0pts.

Round 3 Pairings Thursday 18th June 4pm local time: Anand-Grischuk, Carlsen-Giri, Nakamura-Caruana, Vachier-Lagrave-Topalov, Aronian-Hammer.