Magnus Carlsen, the world No 1, had his worst tournament result since 2015 last week when the 35-year-old ended up fourth of six in the $178,000 (£133,000) Norway Chess event at Oslo, losing four games out of 10.
There were reasons for his disappointing showing. Previous editions of the event were in distant Stavanger, far from the hometown pressures of Oslo, while Carlsen is the father of a baby son and he arrived at several games seemingly unprepared.
He often took too long over his opening moves. The fast time control was 40 moves in the first two hours, followed by a mere 10 seconds per move increment from move 41 until the end of the classical game.
Drawn games were replayed under Armageddon rules, where White had 10 minutes on the clock and Black seven minutes, but a draw on the board counted as a win for Black. Norway’s scoring system was 3 points for a classical win, 1 for a classical draw, 0 for a classical loss, 0.5 for an Armageddon win and 0 for an Armageddon loss.
Carlsen several times entered the confession booth where players could voice their thoughts to the audience. During one game, which he later lost, he summarised his day so far as: 1 Woke up. 2 Had breakfast. 3 Had a nap. 4 Felt really old.
He made a special effort against Gukesh Dommaraju, the Indian 20-year-old who now holds Carlsen’s abdicated position as world champion but has failed to make an impact. Gukesh finished sixth and last in Oslo, and there was no repeat of 2025 when Carlsen lost to the Chennai player then thumped the table in frustration.
Their final round game was vintage Carlsen, despite mishandling his clock time and playing a long ending on increment. It was a textbook demonstration of how to win with bishop v knight and an outside passed pawn. In the final position the end would be 65…Ng7 66 Kf6 Ne8+ 67 Ke7 Ng7 68 Bg4! and Black’s knight is trapped.
Gukesh’s compatriot Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, who was in last place after six rounds, enjoyed a purple patch of four straight wins which, with the aid of the scoring system, took him all the way to first.
Praggnanandhaa’s overall form is strange, though. His stellar 2025 made him one of the favourites for the 2026 Candidates, but he was never in contention there. His Oslo success only takes him to No 11 in the live ratings, with Gukesh a dismal 25th. In contrast, Carlsen has been an unchallenged No 1 for 15 years.
Carlsen’s next event will be the Fide World Team Rapid and Blitz championships, starting on 17 June in Hong Kong. The event was played in central London last year, when the blitz was won by the top-seeded WR team founded by the German chess sponsor Wadim Rosenstein.
Teams of six have mandatory women, junior, and amateur boards. WR are again the top seeds, and include the No 1 ranked woman, Hou Yifan, as well as Carlsen. Teams for the €500,000 (£430,000) event also feature three young stars who could all be the frontrunners for chess in the 2030s: Turkey’s Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, 15, Argentina’s Faustino Oro, 12, and Russia’s Roman Shogdzhiev, 11.
Erdogmus and Oro have already qualified as grandmasters, while Shogdzhiev broke an age record which has stood for 18 years last week when he scored his first of three required GM norms in the Asian Championship at Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The Russian had already narrowly missed his first norm a few months ago at Tashkent and made no mistake in Mongolia, where he was unbeaten against the six GMs he played and drew confidently against India’s experienced Krishnan Sasikiran in the final round.
Shogdzhiev now has the world GM age record of the USA’s Abhimanyu Mishra, 12 years and four months, firmly in his sights. The Russian still has about 12 months to score two more GM norms and reach an overall 2500 rating. That achievement, if it happens, will be sweeter because Oro failed to achieve his own final norm early this year and break the record in Aeroflot Moscow. Oro had to wait until his next event in Sardinia last month before qualifying for the GM title.
Shogdzhiev was born in Elista, Kalmykia, the land of Fide’s former president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. He was taught chess by his father at four, his mother gave up work to home-school him, and the family moved to Moscow to help him. This column mentioned Shogdzhiev several times in 2023-24 when he was still comparatively unknown, but was receiving special treatment, including a series of all-play-all blitz tournaments where the boy could hone his skills against established masters.
Long ago in the early 1930s, the Soviets identified Mikhail Botvinnik, then 21, as a potential world champion. He got special help, including rare trips to the West and a personal trainer. In the late 1960s, the same path was followed for Anatoly Karpov when he emerged on the world scene.
Now it seems that Russia, which currently has no players in the world top 10, plans to restore its former No 1 chess status, with Shogdzhiev as the spearhead. The 11-year-old has seven grandmaster coaches, one for every day of the week, led by the two-time Russian champion Evgeny Tomashevsky, who says of his pupil: “If you play like Roman at 11, it’s very close to a unique case.”
Next week in Hong Kong, Shogdhziev and Oro will play on the two junior boards for Chess United, the No 8 seeds, who are led by the former world champion Vishy Anand.
Shogdzhiev says of being compared to Oro: “I’m very relaxed about it. But, of course, I want to catch up and surpass … We’re not friends, we don’t see each other often. The language barrier is also a hindrance.”
Shogdzhiev says that his ultimate goal is to become world champion: “I just want to. That would be awesome!”
The three super-talents Erdogmus, Oro and Shogdzhiev are all home schooled. This is a stark contrast with Germany’s world No 6, Vincent Keymer, who had to complete his final state exams a few days before a world championship qualifier.
England’s rising talent Supratit Banerjee, 12, has to prioritise his Sutton grammar homework before spending a couple of hours on chess, while Bodhana Sivanandan, England’s top-ranked woman at 11, has achieved all her successes while a pupil at a state primary school in Harrow.
GM Danny Gormally, 50, won the silver medal on his first appearance in the European over-50 senior championship at Acqui Terme, Italy. Gormally scored 6.5/9, with his only defeat being against France’s top-seeded GM Jean-Marc Degraeve, who totalled an unbeaten 7/9. This is a fine result for Gormally, whose streams on chess are increasingly popular and who is one of England’s few full-time professional players. He had declared beforehand that his target was a place in the top three so as to qualify for free entry and expenses for the next championship in 2027.
In the European over-65 championship, which had more well-known players than the over-50, Georgia’s GM Zurab Sturua won with an unbeaten 7.5/9. GM Keith Arkell finished ninth with 6.5/9, FM Terry Chapman 14th with 6/9, and Scotland’s IM Craig Pritchett, who was second in the unofficial over-75 standings, 20th with 6/9.
Chess has almost always decided its world champion by individual matches rather than tournaments of leading contenders, and the historical record supports this. Periods with a single dominant player (Wilhelm Steinitz, Emanuel Lasker, José Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Mikhail Botvinnik, Bobby Fischer, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Carlsen) have been more frequent than instances where the No 1 was only primus inter pares.
When, as now, the official world champion seems inadequate for his role, criticisms of the system quickly multiply. It remains to be seen whether Sindarov, who will challenge Gukesh later this year, can be as impressive in the forthcoming title match as he was in the recent Candidates.
4028: 1 Rb7! Rxb7 2 Nc6+ Ke8 3 Rxd8 mate. If 1…Rxd4 2 Rxd4 should win on material – although in the actual game White missed numerous chances before drawing with K+R v K+N in 108 moves.