Chess: Carlsen stumbles at finish but wins sixth title in seven years at Stavanger

The Guardian

13-06-2025

'Winning by half a point after a lot of results go my way doesn't feel like a statement,' was how Magnis Carlsen summed up the Stavanger ­tournament, where he finished just half a point ahead of Fabiano ­Caruana. The centrepiece of the event was his second game with India's world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, in which Carlsen banged the table in frustrated rage when his winning position slipped away.
Carlsen said that 'the Armageddon games were atrocious' but pointed out that he had scored plus two in classical and claimed that he had played the best chess. He did, with the glaring exception of round six and the table fist-pump.
It was a moment that went round the world. Even the Paris Saint-­Germain football team used ­Gukesh's shocked reaction to describe the ­feeling of winning the Champions League for the first time.
After the tournament was over, Carlsen said: ' It definitely wasn't my finest hour, but I regret the moves I made more than the gesture, because that happened on the spur of the moment.'
He noted that he was only upset at himself and revealed how great the impact had been: 'I was so out of it that I had to jump out of the car on the way back and compose myself for several moments.'
For the world No 2, Hikaru Nakamura and Caruana, the world No 3, the target was a good result and, ­specifically for Nakamura, to keep his lead over Arjun Erigaisi in the race for the 2026 Fide Candidates rating spot. In the event, Caruana went close to winning the tournament in the penultimate round, while for Nakamura it was mission accomplished.
Stavanger's classical time control is unique – 40 moves for the first two hours, then a cliff drop to 10 seconds a move, with draws replayed under Armageddon rules where a draw count as a black win. With three points for a classical win, that is a huge gearing for the cliff drop games, of which Gukesh v Carlsen was one, where the outcome changed 180 degrees between moves 40 and 50. Spectators in Norway and online loved it, but it is hard to imagine the players in a local club coping.
There was another event in Stavanger with the identical prize money, $150,000, to the men's contest, but the many fans who commented freely on Carlsen, Caruana and Gukesh mostly ignored the women's tournament, won by Ukraine's Anna Muzychuk with the world champion, China's Ju Wenjun, relegated to fourth place.
Anna, 35, and her younger sister and former world champion Mariya, 32, are the world's strongest chess playing sisters next to Hungary's more famous Polgars. They cooperate closely and, when one takes part in a tournament, the other acts as her second, a system which works well despite their different personalities.Their numerous classical games have all been drawn, although Anna leads 2-0 at blitz.
Ju had won Stavanger 2024 with Anna Muzychuk runner-up, and led for seven rounds in 2025, but faded at the finish. Ju v Muzychuk in round nine, where the world champion miscalculated in an equal position at move 27 and was then outplayed in a long endgame, was the decider.
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Chess fans often judge women players by their success against very strong male GMs, and by this criterion there are arguably few qualifiers – the Polgars, China's Hou Yifan who is still ranked world No 1 but is semi-retired, and Nona Gaprindashvili from half a century back. One could also add the first woman world champion, Vera Menchik, who was uniquely accessible as a Londoner who played a leading role in the capital's chess life as a player, teacher and writer until her tragic death from a German V1 rocket in 1944. In her day, the 'Menchik Club' was the name for the group of her master victims, led by Max Euwe, a world champion.
Whereas the young Indians are the clear future of world chess, it is harder to single out their female equivalents. China's Lu Miaoyi is a possibility, but her progress has slowed lately.
The most likely stimulus for a young female mega-talent is the Jeanne Cairns Sinquefield prize of $100,000 each for up to five US women who become grandmasters in the next five years. The best young US talent, 15-year-old Alice Lee, has declared herself up for it, and won her first round game in the traditional $250,000 Cairns Cup at St Louis this week.
3976 1 Bxf6!+! Rxf6 2 Rxh7+! and Black resigned. After 2...Qxh7 3 Qxh7+ Kxh7 4 Nxf6+ and 5 Nxe8 White finishes decisive material ahead.