The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen was left hitting the table in frustration as he lost to Gukesh from a winning position in the sixth round of the Norway Chess tournament.

Gukesh had the white pieces and the opening was a slow manoeuvring Ruy Lopez Berlin where Carlsen had equalised by move 17 and was at least a bit better by move 20. Gukesh kept playing slightly inferior moves 22.Bc6?! (Rc1) 23.Qc2?!, 24.Kh1?! (24.Ne2) and finally after 25.Qa2 (maybe 25.Kh2) he was lost and soon about to lose a piece.

Maybe Carlsen's 36...Bxd5 wasn't the cleanest (36...Bxf3 or 36...Rh8 may have induced a quick resignation) but he was still clearly winning. 39...Kf6 was the start of a plan of penetrating with the king, accidents can happen when the king gets this exposed and perhaps 39...Ne6 was the more practical win. The players were now down to two minutes each and only 10 seconds on the clock and Carlsen let go his winning advantage with 44...f6? (44...Rh8 was still a clear win) and then a few moves later 52...Ne2?? blundered his whole position away, with still a couple of decent moves 52...Re8 or 52...g5 available to him it's hard to say what he overlooked, if he was banking on queening one of his pawns this would seem to me to be a very risky line to try in time trouble, maybe he just completely miscalculated 53.Rxe2. Once Gukesh was on top he converted without error.

Carlsen hit the table in frustration making the pieces jump in the air at the end of the game before resigning. He recovered his composure quickly but games that turn around from wins to losses are the most painful. This is Carlsen's first classical loss to Gukesh and first classical loss to a World Champion since Anand-Carlsen, London Chess Classic, December 10th 2010. It's hard to believe such a result would have happened with a regular 30 seconds per move increment but Norway only used a rapid 10 seconds a move, and even then only after move 40, games such as this would be entirely the point of their decision.

The other two games were drawn and Erigaisi beat Wei Yi and Caruana beat Nakamura in Armageddon games.

Standings: Carlsen, Caruana 9.5/18, Gukesh 8.5, Nakamura, Erigaisi 7.5 and Wei Yi 6.5 points. For comparison without the Armageddon games and using standard scoring the standings are: Carlsen, Caruana 3.5/6, Gukesh, Nakamura 3/6 and Erigaisi and Wei Yi 2.5 points.