Praggnanandhaa Beats Gukesh In Race For Norway Chess Title

Bengaluru: The Norway Chess tournament is primed for an extraordinary final round – where the world No.1 and reigning world champion will be fighting to avoid a last-place finish.

Magnus Carlsen and D Gukesh have had a rough tournament in Oslo and are at ten and eight points respectively after the penultimate round. They will face each other in Round 10 that will decide who finishes at the bottom.

In Round 9, R Praggnanandhaa, playing Black, found his third classical win in a row – this time against Gukesh. His earlier wins came against Alireza Firouzja and Carlsen. On Thursday, the Gukesh-Praggnanandhaa game followed the one between Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Wei Yi from the 2025 Tata Steel Chess for the first 14 moves.

Praggnanandhaa improvised with an f5 novelty on move 13 to which Gukesh responded with a losing move – 14.g4, exposing his rook. Though the 20-year-old world champion fought back, opening up the centre, it wasn’t long before White, a piece down, fell apart. Praggnanandhaa kept finding the only moves to bring up victory.

“I’m quite proud about this game because this is how I usually lose to him. He does some weird, creative stuff, I end up overthinking and somehow doing something myself and losing. So, I thought I managed my time well and I was also calculating well,” Praggnanandhaa said.

Heading into the final round, Praggnanandhaa is just half a point behind leader Wesley So, who is at 15.5 points. The third player in contention for first place is Firouzja. So won against Carlsen in the Armageddon after their classical game was drawn. “Magnus is trying to play for a win with any colour, any position, and it’s probably why he lost a lot of games. The young generation needs to learn from his chess,” World Championship challenger Javokhir Sindarov said on the chess24 broadcast.

In the women’s section, the champion was decided a day early with Kazakh GM Bibisara Assaubayeva needing only a draw against Anna Muzychuk to win the tournament. Divya Deshmukh lost to Zhu Jiner in their classical face-off to drop in the standings while Koneru Humpy scored an Armageddon win over reigning women’s world champion Ju Wenjun. The Indian GMs occupy the bottom two spots.

“During the Candidates I had a lot of stress,” Bibisara said after her win. “I felt like I just want to quit chess. After the Candidates it was hard to realise that I took only second place, but then I just said to myself, ‘I need to continue enjoying chess,’ have some camps, and come to Norway Chess and show my best and try to win the tournament.”

She was accompanied by Sindarov, who flew to Oslo right after the Super Chess Classic Romania of the Grand Chess Tour. “It’s fun because he’s also a very strong chess player and he understands me. Sometimes he was angry how I played but in general I hope he is proud.”